NATO Braces for Donald Trump Returning 'With a Vengeance'

NATO leaders are war gaming a potential second term for former President Donald Trump, with a former senior member of the organization telling Newsweek that many in its upper echelons fear he could be back "with a vengeance."

The runaway leader for the Republican nomination is barreling toward the November presidential election showing no sign of easing his criticism of the 74-year-old alliance, and its European members in particular.

"Look, NATO has taken advantage of our country," Trump said last week. "The European countries took advantage." Asked about his commitment to defending NATO nations while in office, Trump replied: "Depends if they treat us properly."

Some NATO officials publicly welcomed such criticism when Trump was in office, crediting the president with pushing national leaders—several of whom chafed at White House coercion—closer to agreed defense spending targets. But the majority of alliance members have still not reached the 2 percent of GDP military spending target set in 2014.

The latest remarks could be considered ominous given Trump's past assertions that NATO is "obsolete," and his reported threats to pull the U.S. out of the alliance unless other members rapidly expanded their military expenditure.

Such criticism came before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine revitalized the trans-Atlantic bloc. But many in the NATO establishment fear President Vladimir Putin's historic gamble has not necessarily swung Trump behind the trans-Atlantic cause, not least because of the former's president's repeated calls for Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.

Within NATO leadership, "there is probably the worry that this time Trump is going to be serious about pulling out," Fabrice Pothier—a former director of policy planning for NATO—told Newsweek.

"He floated it during his first term, and then that was shut down largely by the U.S. system: the Pentagon, Congress. And then he had to move on to putting his disruptive gaze on other issues like the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal with Iran] and others.

"But it could be that this time he comes back with a vengeance."

Newsweek has contacted a Trump campaign spokesperson by email to request comment. NATO did not respond to Newsweek's emailed request for comment in time for publication.

Handle with Care

Trump's most potent attack was over so-called "burden sharing," and the continued failure of allied nations to at least meet the 2 percent of GDP military spending target agreed at the 2014 Wales summit. Then, alliance leaders committed to meeting that threshold by 2024. But as the deadline looms, the majority of nations—including big hitters like Germany, France, Turkey, Italy, and others—are falling short.

"That's where the debate is really quite raw, and if Trump were to be reelected, it will become even more difficult," Pothier said. "He will see that basically the numbers are not there yet. So, that conversation is still one to be had even beyond 2024."

NATO leaders sought to soften Trump's vitriol during his first term by crediting the president with the positive trend in alliance spending, which has been on the rise since Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent alliance summit in Wales.

"Let me thank you for the leadership you show on the issue of defense spending because it is very important that we all contribute more to our shared security, and it is really having an impact because, as you said, allies are now spending more on defense," Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said during a visit to the Trump White House in 2018.

NATO allies also appealed to Trump's business instincts, framing rising alliance spending as an opportunity for U.S. coffers. In 2019, the then-president said he would help smaller NATO nations purchase American equipment, noting in his unique style that the U.S. "makes by far the best military equipment in the world: the best jets, the best missiles, the best guns, the best everything."

Pothier said allies may look to play the same cards in a second Trump term. NATO capitals may also offer to expand the alliance's raft of responsibilities to take certain matters off the White House's plate. Trump himself in 2020 suggested NATO take a more active role in the Middle East amid his effort to pivot away from the region.

"It shows that there is this thinking that if things are no longer prime U.S. national security interests, actually NATO can take care of them," Pothier said. "I think some of the NATO officials will try to convince him that's fine," he added, for example transitioning collective support for Ukraine from the U.S.-led Ramstein format to in-house at NATO.

Goodbye to All That?

The doomsday scenario for NATO is that Trump follows through on his threat to withdraw from the alliance. Among those who, according to aides, talked him out of such a step during his first term were National Security Adviser John Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

"There is this concern that this time he might mean it, and not only that he might mean it, but that he might do it," Pothier said. "This is obviously a far-fetched scenario, but I think NATO's most senior officials will still have this in the back of their minds."

Second-term Trump is expected to be more confident, less retrained, and more motivated to reshape the executive branch—and others—in his own image. For all the bluster of the 2016 campaign, Trump initially surrounded himself with establishment operators largely committed a place at the head of the U.S.-crafted "international order."

This time might be different. "The assumption is that those people aren't going to be around this time," Michael Allen—who served as special assistant to President George W. Bush and the senior director at the National Security Council—told Newsweek.

"Pompeo, Bolton, and others have said privately to people since they left that we have no idea how close the president came to wanting to get out," added Allen, who is now the managing director of the Beacon Global Strategy strategic advisory firm. "I'm not so sure he won't try it again if he wins."

"I think there's all sorts of people in the Congress and others who try to thwart an effort by Trump," Allen said. "But nonetheless, there's going to be fewer internal institutional hurdles, I believe, if Trump were to win a second term."

Still, even Trump is somewhat a hostage to broader trends. Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Newsweek that a second-term Trump would be faced with "a new strategic reality in Europe."

"Europe has been geopolitically re-divided, and even if Trump were to cut some kind of deal with Putin on Ukraine, I think that Europe is for the foreseeable future going to be a central theater for the Pentagon and for American force planning," Kupchan said.

"The U.S. forces that have been dispatched to Europe since February 2022 are not going anywhere anytime soon.

"At the end of the day, Trump is a politician. NATO has strong support on both sides of the aisle. And so, while I can imagine him going back to berating allies for not spending more, it's hard for me to see what's in it for him politically when it comes to withdrawing from the alliance."

Europe's Wake-up Call

Trump's gripes with NATO were nothing new, though he was certainly more pugnacious in expressing them than his predecessors. Successive U.S. administrations have pushed their European allies to increase military spending and ease the burden on Washington, where many policymakers increasingly see Europe as yesterday's battleground.

"You have a rising group of what you might call 'Indo-Pacificists,' people that are very interested in how China is emerging and evolving, and they are now making the argument that actually the U.S. needs to deprioritize in Europe," James Rogers, the co-founder of the U.K.-based Council on Geostrategy think tank, told Newsweek.

As long ago as 2011, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates tried to deliver a wake-up call. "If current trends in the decline of European defense capabilities are not halted and reversed, future U.S. political leaders—those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me—may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost," he said.

Gates' words have only been partially heeded. "A new generation is coming, and they are animated by a different set of assumptions and beliefs," Rogers said. "We in Europe can't say we were unaware of it, or we didn't see it, or just blame it all on the very mercurial character of Donald Trump."

"We seem to be ignoring it, maybe deliberately so, because we don't want to deal with the cost of the consequences."

Much of Trump's first-term foreign policy was rooted in long-term trends, even if it was delivered with his uniquely combative flourish. "The process continued under Trump, but he didn't start it, he was picking up where Obama left off," Kupchan said.

Trump, Kupchan said, was "much less tactful in how he twisted arms," but added: "This is a bipartisan issue, not a Trump issue."

European leaders who fail to look beyond the former president risk dangerous complacency, Allen said. "If you start talking to House Republican congressmen, they're really frustrated that the Europeans don't seem to be meeting their obligations either to NATO or to Ukraine," he said. "Trump didn't create populism."

"If they just dismiss it as a Trump phenomenon, it greatly risks the health of the trans-Atlantic alliance."