NATO Is Worth Defending

National Review Online

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

 

NATO has been an extraordinary American success story. It held the line in Western Europe throughout the Cold War, and it did so peacefully, saving countless U.S. lives. It underpinned America’s leadership of the West, militarily, politically, and economically. It enabled the West to outlast the Soviets, and by accepting a number of previously Soviet-controlled nations into its ranks, it avoided the creation of a dangerously unsettled “grey zone” stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Without NATO, there would have been many more Yugoslavias and Ukraines.

 

The key to NATO’s effectiveness has been deterrence. To work, deterrence must, by definition, be credible. NATO is backed by American firepower and bolstered by its commitment to collective defense: An attack on one NATO member is treated as an attack on all. The Soviets never launched a war in Western Europe because of the danger of a devastating response from the U.S. Moscow never knew for sure whether the Americans would be prepared to risk their own homeland to save Western Europe, but its reading of Washington led the Soviet leadership to conclude that it did not want to find out.

 

Communists no longer preside in the Kremlin. However, with Russia now engaged on a revanchist mission, most bloodily in Ukraine, it is essential that no signal be sent out of the U.S. that could lead Moscow to think that it could get away with attacking a smaller NATO member — Estonia, say — that it regards as more properly belonging within Russia’s sphere.

 

The stakes are high. If Russia invaded Estonia without a major response from the U.S., it would not stop there. Some members of NATO, unable to be sure that they could rely on collective defense, might then well decide to come to an accommodation with Moscow. Others might punch back, offering the U.S. an unappetizing choice between a humiliating withdrawal from Europe or participating, once again, in a war “over there.”

 

Sadly, recent comments by Donald Trump sent a wrong signal. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina, he claimed that “NATO was busted until I came along.” He explained that he had said “everybody’s gonna pay.” This was a reference to the fact that most of the alliance’s members had been making no effort to live up to their commitment to be spending 2 percent of GDP on defense by 2024, something he had tried to change. Asked, he said, whether the U.S. would protect countries that weren’t paying their way, he had said “absolutely not.” And then, he claimed, he had gone further, telling the president of a “big country” that was not paying the right amount that not only would the U.S. not defend it if it were invaded by Russia, but that he “would encourage [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”

 

When campaigning for the presidency in 2015–16, Trump was sharply critical of the way that so many NATO members appeared to be freeloading off the U.S. His language was undiplomatic and risked emboldening Russia, which by that point had already invaded both Georgia and Ukraine. But the substance of his complaint — that the alliance was being shortchanged by many of its members — was fair. And his approach, reinforced by many Europeans’ growing realization that the threat from Putin could not be wished away, worked. Many more NATO members started to boost their defense spending. Under Trump, the U.S. did too. Moscow seemed to get the message. There were no new military adventures in Europe, and the war in Ukraine’s east settled into a stalemate.

 

Prodded, doubtless, by the scale of Russia’s renewed attack on Ukraine, more of NATO’s European members are increasing military spending. Moreover, the alliance’s defenses in the northeast have been strengthened not only by close Nordic–Baltic cooperation but also by Finland joining NATO and by Sweden, kept out for now by Hungary, acting as if it had. Poland is establishing itself as a significant regional power. Its defense spending is set to reach 4 percent of GDP this year.

 

All this, together with an impressive collective effort to support Ukraine, has meant that Europe is doing much more for the defense of the West than it had for many years. Some NATO countries, however, have much more to do, and there is still reason enough for Trump to bring up again the issue of those that are not pulling their weight. But, however successful his past bludgeoning has been, he needs to tread more delicately now. The Pax Americana is visibly crumbling, making the world a more dangerous place. This means that the U.S. should take even more care not to give its enemies — or its allies — any reason to question its resolve. Casting doubt on NATO’s collective defense does just that.

 

That’s something that someone who may be the next president should remember.