As I watched Trump’s comedy performance at the NATO summit yesterday and having listened to Mark Rutte’s embarrassing homage to him, I was reminded that those who should know better have abandoned those who rely on them to be the guardians of moral decency and integrity. To listen to Rutte makes me literally want to vomit; the sycophancy is beyond nauseating. If it escaped your attention, you should go back and watch Marco Rubio’s face in the press conference. He was a man who just wanted the ground to open up and swallow him; he was so uncomfortable. Trump is surrounded by people terrified of telling him what he doesn’t want to hear for fear of losing their seats on the corruption gravy train.
It is absolutely true to say that when Trump is gone, all these people will be left with an indelible stain that was their complicity in a pattern of behaviour that destroyed the lives of millions around the world. Europe and NATO have reached a fork in the road, and challenging though it might be, I fear it’s time to abandon any thought of the US honouring its Article 5 obligations.
Time and again, I have listened with dismay as Americans have asked the question, ‘Have we reached a constitutional crisis?’ only to be lied to and told, ‘We are not quite there yet.’ There is an epidemic of delusion that extends well beyond the borders of the US, as those who should know better seem utterly incapable of saying ‘enough is enough’, with the possible exception of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and, more recently, Giorgia Meloni.
We hear European leaders constantly use the same refrain when attempting to avoid upsetting Trump over his outrageous demands to annex Greenland. Nobody says ‘It is wholly unacceptable for the president of the lead nation of the NATO alliance to demand a fellow NATO ally hand over a territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. There is no real condemnation from Denmark’s allies, just the classic ‘The future of Greenland is a matter for the people of Greenland’. It is sickening to watch so-called world leaders petrified to speak truth to power.
The ludicrous claims from Trump about the US spending hundreds of billions to defend Europe are frankly a lie of epic proportions. Often, the assertion is that the US contributes $980 billion to defend NATO allies and Europe. Rest assured, the US does not spend its entire defence budget on defending Europe. Trump is a master of conflation. It’s no more evident than in discussions of US support for NATO. The truth of the matter is that Trump is a geopolitical hooker selling protection for the purpose of self-enrichment, at the expense of American taxpayers and the reputation of the US on the global stage.
Before we move on, let’s take a look at the ACTUAL direct contributions from the US to NATO's operations. As noted by NATO itself, it is:
…. resourced through the direct and indirect contributions of its members. NATO’s common funds are composed of direct contributions to collective budgets and programmes. These funds (around EUR 4.6 billion for 2025, and up to EUR 5.3 billion for 2026) enable NATO to deliver capabilities and run the entirety of the Organization and its military commands.
The US and Germany contribute 14.9% of that budget, and the remainder is split among the remaining members. You can look at the more detailed funding arrangement here. The US dollar contribution is $860 million; that’s just a little over half of the size of the slush fund Trump wanted to set up for his domestic allies.
Of course, direct contributions to the alliance's operational costs are only part of the story. NATO does not have an army; the military force is contributed by its members. The total number of active-service members contributed by member states is around 3.5 million, of which 40% are US personnel. The critical point to be aware of is that both the fiscal and military contributions are based on defence spending, with the US spending more than one-third of the world’s total defence spending, which is more than the next 10 nations combined. It’s this massive level of spending to protect US interests that allows Trump to weave his false narrative.
The US defence budget is NOT dedicated to the preservation of NATO; it’s dedicated to the defence of the US. It would spend that money on defence regardless of its NATO obligations. Rest assured, if the US walked away from NATO, it would not invest any of Europe’s alleged protection money for the benefit of the American people. What you have to understand is that threats to leave NATO are just attempts to gain leverage. Trump could not unilaterally decide to leave NATO; it would require either an Act of Congress or a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Currently, under Section 1250A of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, the president is explicitly prohibited from suspending, terminating, or withdrawing from. This law was passed because the last administration saw the threat of Trump leaving NATO as very real.
If there’s one thing we know about Trump, it’s that the law means nothing to him, and his use of executive power has shown he repeatedly circumvents it, knowing it will take time for the courts to catch up. No assumptions should be made by any NATO ally that Trump could not walk away; all he has to do is withdraw US troops from the NATO command structure and declare that he no longer intends to honour Article 5, and it’s all over.
I don’t believe that Trump actually wants to leave NATO, and I’ll explain why in a moment, but what he does want is leverage because his whole strategy is about using it to enforce compliance. As I stated earlier, I think it’s already the case that he would not honour Article 5 if Russia invaded one of the alliance's smaller members. I don’t even think he would honour it if Poland were invaded. Put simply, the US is no longer a reliable ally, yet it reaps the benefits of global force posture by having bases all across allied territories.
The claim is that without the US, NATO is impotent. I wholeheartedly DISAGREE. I have stated many times that if you give a bully your lunch money, get ready to go hungry, because he’ll keep coming back for more. Trump’s evangelical belief in American exceptionalism is amusing to me, but at the same time it frightens me to death. This is a man who would not hesitate to throw his children under the bus if it made him enough money or kept him out of the prison showers. While his transactional nature makes him predictable, I don’t think people realise there are no limits to his transactionalism. Winning is never enough for Trump; he has to humiliate his opponent. This is why he’s really struggling with Iran, because far from humiliating the Iranians, they have humiliated him and he simply can’t cope with it.
It’s the same reason he sided with Putin against Zelenskyy: he’s never forgiven him for not dishing up dirt on Biden, which led to his impeachment. Trump’s threats to draw down troops from Europe are just another attempt to gain leverage. He will draw down enough troops to convince European leaders he’s serious, but it’s all a game to him; it plays into his malignant narcissism. I believe that it’s time for European allies to call his bluff, withdraw access to all allied bases and tell him to remove ALL military personnel from allied nations.
The consequences for the US would be both militarily and economically devastating. It’s easy to throw out sound bites that the US doesn’t need allies in Europe and that such allies are a drain on the US economy; that’s a complete red herring. The truth is, a withdrawal from NATO would unquestionably leave a significant gap in European defence capabilities, but the constraints it would impose on the US would be equally damaging to power projection and global reach. Without access to NATO bases, operations in the Middle East, the Arctic, and Africa would undermine the rapid deployment of US assets that the US relies so heavily upon to maintain its deterrence capabilities, particularly in intelligence and monitoring Russian submarines.
The obvious question Europe needs to ask is where the threats to European security will come from, and the inevitable answer is Russia. Nobody should dismiss Trump’s willingness to align with Russia; we have seen more than enough evidence to suggest that he would be more than happy with the US, China and Russia dividing up the geopolitical spheres of influence, and that’s why he no longer sees Europe as imperative to US strategic planning.
What Europe needs to look at is what real threat Russia presents to European security in the absence of the US. My argument would be to look at the war in Ukraine. Ukraine was expected to capitulate in a matter of weeks, yet as I write this, Ukraine is inflicting around 1000 casualties on Russia every day, as well as destroying energy infrastructure deep inside their territory. If you want to take a look at their loss of men and military hardware, take a look at the Russian Casualties Dashboard. It does not take a rocket scientist to understand that even without the US, NATO would emerge victorious from any conflict with Russia, given the current state of its military. The obvious move militarily would be to welcome Ukraine into NATO and take full advantage of the wealth of knowledge and experience it could bring to a reimagined alliance.
Thus far, we have not even touched on the economic impact on the US of withdrawing from NATO. I would point you to an important piece by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies by Philip Luck, Karen Jackson, and Oleksandr Shepotylo, published on April 22nd 2026. The key findings were:
NATO member states see a 12–27% long-run increase in bilateral trade, controlling for EU membership and other agreements.
U.S. exports are estimated to fall 16.1% if the country exits NATO—equivalent to roughly $240 billion annually.
The U.S. GDP would fall by an estimated 4% following a NATO exit—approximately $100 billion per year at current output levels.
It soon becomes clear that an exit from NATO would be a strategic, economic, and geopolitical own goal, further isolating the US and diminishing its relevance on the world stage. The piece cites an important paper, “Beyond Security: The Trade Implications of Joining NATO,” which is well worth your time to get a more granular understanding of the impact.
The bottom line, as noted in the headline piece from CSIS, is:
NATO membership raises bilateral trade between members by 12–27 percent in the long run, even after accounting for EU membership, preferential trade agreements, and other defense pacts.
Threats to leave NATO may make for great political sound bites within a narrative that attempts to paint Europe as suckling at the expense of US taxpayers, but it totally misrepresents the good value for money it provides. To be very clear, Trump in his first term was absolutely right to attack NATO members for not paying their share of the costs of European security. I said it back then, and I have no problem admitting it today. Since then, however, they have all been meeting their 2% obligations and are committed to further increases in spending, a commitment not made easy by Trump’s wartime adventures in Iran. Never forget the amount of US debt held by allied nations, and that if Europe abandoned US LNG imports and chose to source it elsewhere, it would devastate the US energy industry overnight. Rest assured, just as with Iran, Trump does NOT hold all of the cards.
I know I have deviated today from my deep dive into the economic threats on the horizon for everyday Americans, but given the utter nonsense vomited by Mad King Don yesterday, I thought it was worth an excursion into the truth about NATO's return on investment. I know some readers will say, ’I really don’t care’, but you should because the economic and strategic impact will extend into every corner of your life.
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I wish more people could read this analysis. Like you, I wanted to vomit at the lickspittle Rutte.
Since he believes he can just take children & do what he wants with them, it should not be a surprise he thinks he can just take Greenland & do with it what he wants.