Is NATO Headed for A Breakup?

At long last, in 2024, a majority of NATO members (including Europe’s leading power, Germany) finally met their modest commitment to devote at least 2 percent of annual gross domestic product (GDP) to defense.

But Trump has already escalated his burden-sharing demands at the start of his new term in the White House. 

He now insists that the NATO partners increase their military spending to at least 5 percent of annual GDP. Such a level of spending would require The European Union (EU) and Great Britain combined to spend $1.1 trillion—an amount even greater than the bloated U.S. “defense” budget.

Here Comes JD Vance

And it seems Vice President JD Vance, in recent remarks over in Europe at the Munich Security Conference, was tasked to carry a clear message to Europe. Early in Vance’s speech, he did include a call for greater burden-sharing.  “While the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine,” the vice president stated, “we also believe that it’s important, in the coming years, for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.”  It quickly became clear, though, that his emphasis was on another issue that loomed as a potential wedge dividing the Alliance.

“[T]he threat that I worry most about for Europe is not Russia.  It’s not China.  It’s not any other external actor.  What I worry about is the threat from within—the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values that are shared with the United States of America.

I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.  He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.”

A Speech That Europe Should Consider Carefully 

Vance proceeded to enumerate numerous examples of European governments adopting authoritarian policies under the guise of defending democracy. Such steps included censorship measures to ban “hate speech” and “disinformation.” Vance and other critics argue that such exceptions to free speech protections are inherently vacuous and subjective. Worse, they can become a potent mechanism to silence political and ideological opponents. 

From the standpoint of Trump, Vance and other populist conservatives, what was taking place in many European countries was a more virulent version of the treatment they had been facing in the United States.

In addition to censorship measures, Vance and other conservatives believe that ideological opponents were now using unfounded or excessive allegations of Russian meddling to pervert election outcomes. 

Vance found the recent conduct of Romania’s government to be especially egregious.  A fading European commitment to democratic values, he charged, has become so bad that Romania “straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicious of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.” 

He admonished the Munich Conference attendees to avoid such hypocrisy.  “I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective.  You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections.  We certainly do.  You can condemn it on the world stage, even.  But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.”

His concerns about the handling of Romania’s election were legitimate, as I discuss here. Other analysts have reached similar conclusions that such conduct by a supposedly democratic government was deeply troubling.

A Warning to NATO? 

Vance’s objections about the alleged deficiency of Europe’s commitment to democracy was a message that European leaders and their admirers in the United States clearly did not wish to hear.  However, if they want to preserve NATO, it is a warning that they must heed. 

The Trump administration’s escalating demands for greater burden-sharing already threaten to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies. 

Washington’s ostentatious exclusion of Europe from playing a role in new negotiations with Russia regarding the war in Ukraine is another development that could fracture the Alliance.

U.S. complaints that Europe is betraying the democratic values supposedly undergirding the trans-Atlantic relationship might become a third major wedge dividing NATO. 

And this one may have even more potential than the other two to create a fatal division.

The Europeans need to face the fact that, like it or not, populist conservatives control the current U.S. administration.

Tucker Carlson and other populist conservatives even have expressed admiration for Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban and other right-wing political leaders in Europe. 

Trump administration policymakers are not likely to stand by idly as entrenched establishment governments in Europe harass their ideological compatriots on the other side of the Atlantic.

Dr. Ted Galen Carpenter is a contributing editor to 19FortyFive and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and the Libertarian Institute. He also served in various senior policy positions during a 37-year career at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,300 articles on defense, foreign policy and civil liberties issues. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).