NATO is about security — not dollars and cents

Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, is CEO of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and host of the weekly podcast “World Review with Ivo Daalder.”

“You mean, if Russia attacked Lithuania, we would go to war with Russia?” Donald J. Trump asked an aide explaining to him how NATO worked after he became president in 2017. “That’s crazy.”

And he’s right. It would be crazy to go to war with Russia, a nuclear power that could destroy the U.S. — and the rest of the world — if it wished to do so.

But the point of NATO isn’t to go to war against Russia — it’s to prevent war in the first place. And the North Atlantic Alliance, which turned 75 years old last week, has done this more successfully than any military alliance in history.

The fundamental misunderstanding is the result of a key fallacy in Trump’s view of alliances, which is that they’re about the fair sharing of burdens rather than common security.

For example, in February Trump said he’d told European allies that weren’t spending enough on defense that he’d encourage Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” if those countries don’t spend more. And while he later reassured a British audience that he’d “100 percent” keep the U.S. in NATO, he conditioned that on allies paying their “fair share” and “play[ing] fair.”

Trump is hardly alone in this view that the alliance hinges on fair burden-sharing — which is just code for Europe paying more for its defense. And many NATO leaders, starting with its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, have since sought to placate Trump and other alliance critics by pointing out how much more European members are contributing to their defense and are ready to spend more.

In February, Stoltenberg touted an “unprecedented rise” in defense spending, with 18 allies now spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. “In 2024, NATO Allies in Europe will invest a combined total of 380 billion US dollars in defense. For the first time, this amounts to 2% of their combined GDP,” he enthused. Never mind that Europe spent far more on defense during the Cold War and was still spending 2 percent in 2000 — 10 years after the Soviet Union collapsed.

To be sure, a serious commitment to spend money on defense is important to ensure security, but it’s not what alliances are solely — or even mainly — about. At their core, alliances are about the understanding that the security of an ally is fundamental to one’s own.

“An armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” states Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, noting that in such an event, each member “will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

This promise of collective defense is what makes NATO a force for peace. Any adversary bent on aggression against a member country must take into account the possibility — if not the high likelihood — that it will be met with a military response drawing on the full collective capacity of all allies, not the one it attacked.

For Americans, the lesson learned from two bloody world wars — wars in which GIs had to cross an ocean to fight on Europe’s beaches and fields  — was that their ultimate security depended on the security of Europe. Far better, then, to prevent wars in Europe by committing to defend allies from the start.

So it was for NATO’s European members too, as they continued living in the shadow of the Soviet Union and then Russia — by far the strongest and most aggressive military power on the Continent — after two devastating wars. For them, real security resided in the U.S.’s commitment to come to their defense.

But this dependence has had two consequences: First, it led some European counties to abdicate serious thought about military security — especially after the Cold War — as NATO had ultimately rendered war unlikely. But Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine has reawakened all of Europe to the need of taking defense seriously. Hence, the increase in military investment celebrated by Stoltenberg.

Second, this European dependence frequently fed doubts about America’s commitment to the Continent’s security. There is, after all, something quite unnatural about the U.S. being willing to go to war an ocean away in order to defend another country — especially when this might ignite a nuclear holocaust in response.

This is why U.S. policy toward NATO has been as focused on reassuring allies of its commitment to defend them as it has been on deterring an attack in the first place. Along these lines, the deployment of American troops near the front line and allowing some allies to participate in nuclear missions have both enhanced deterrence and acted as reassurance.

It’s in this context that Trump’s efforts to call America’s commitment to NATO into question is so concerning. By conditioning America’s willingness to come to an ally’s defense, Trump is undermining deterrence while also weakening both its allies’ and America’s security.

At their core, alliances are win-win institutions — the security they generate is mutually reinforcing. But Trump, and those who think like him, live in a win-lose world where the only way they win is if others lose. And that’s a world that turns alliances from security institutions into financial transactions.

Ultimately, however, the security of allies isn’t a question of dollars and cents — it is the key to America’s security as well.