the end of American Internationalism

The End of American Internationalism? Why NATO Allies Are Questioning US Commitment

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The End of American Internationalism: NATO Allies Question US Defense Commitment.
European NATO allies face unprecedented uncertainty as Trump’s policies raise fundamental questions about America’s commitment to transatlantic security and collective defense.

Here’s a question that keeps European defense ministers awake at night: Can you build a security strategy on uncertainty? Because that’s exactly what NATO’s 31 other members are trying to do right now, and the stakes have never been higher.

Picture this: You’re Poland’s defense chief, staring at a 1,500-kilometer border with Russia and Belarus. Your American ally—the one who’s supposed to have your back—just suggested that whether they’ll defend you “depends on your definition” of the treaty obligation. That’s not a diplomatic hiccup. That’s the sound of 75 years of transatlantic security consensus cracking under pressure.

Welcome to the new reality of the end of American internationalism, where the world’s most powerful military alliance finds itself questioning the very foundation it was built upon.

The Unraveling of a 75-Year Bargain

For three-quarters of a century, NATO operated on what seemed like an unshakeable understanding: America would shoulder the lion’s share of defense costs in exchange for political leadership in Europe. European allies accepted their dependence on US military power, while Washington derived enormous strategic benefits from this arrangement—forward bases, political influence, and a united democratic front against adversaries.

But Donald Trump has seemingly rejected that trade-off. His America First agenda presents something NATO has never truly faced before: an American president who views the alliance not as a strategic asset but as a financial burden.

The implications are staggering. During the June 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, Trump demanded that allies increase defense spending to an eye-watering 5% of GDP by 2035—nearly double what the United States itself spends. He’s questioned whether America would defend allies who don’t meet his spending requirements. He’s even suggested that NATO members wouldn’t come to America’s aid if the US were attacked, inverting the entire logic of collective defense.

When Reassurance Becomes the Problem

Here’s something that should alarm anyone paying attention: the fact that NATO’s secretary-general had to publicly state that the United States is “totally committed” to Article 5 highlighted the fragility of political trust at the heart of transatlantic security.

Think about that for a moment. When the cornerstone principle of your defensive alliance—that an attack on one is an attack on all—requires constant verbal reassurance from senior officials, you don’t have a communication problem. You have a credibility crisis.

The Article 5 guarantee has been invoked exactly once in NATO’s history: by the United States after 9/11. European allies responded by sending their soldiers to fight and die in Afghanistan alongside Americans for two decades. Trump’s recent dismissive comments about those European contributions—questioning the role of European and Canadian troops who fought and died alongside Americans in Afghanistan—have cut deep in European capitals.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s pointed response captured the frustration perfectly: France and the US were “loyal and faithful allies,” and France had “respect and friendship” for the United States, adding “I think we’re entitled to expect the same”.

The Defense Spending Shell Game

The 5% GDP target dominates headlines, but it obscures a more fundamental question: What exactly is all this money supposed to achieve?

Behind the budget increases, stockpile targets, forward deployments, and institutional innovations lies a more ambiguous reality: What, precisely, is all this spending meant to achieve? Is NATO preparing for high-intensity warfighting, persistent hybrid competition, or long-term systemic rivalry?

Consider the contradictions:

  • Spain calls the 5% target “unreasonable” and says it won’t meet it by 2035
  • Belgium indicates it won’t set the 5% target either
  • Meanwhile, Poland—living next door to the threat—already exceeds these benchmarks

The disparity reveals something crucial: European allies don’t share a unified threat perception. For the Baltic states and Poland, Russian aggression is existential. For Spain and Portugal, it’s abstract. This fragmentation makes a coordinated European response to American unpredictability extraordinarily difficult.

Adding to the confusion, decisions about new capability targets were made before the United States Department of Defense completed its Global Posture Review, which is expected to shift significant numbers of troops and capabilities out of Europe toward the Indo-Pacific and Middle East. European allies are being asked to fill capability gaps without knowing which American forces will remain to support them.

Europe’s Costly Awakening

The response from Europe has been nothing short of revolutionary—at least on paper.

Germany, long criticized for its reluctance on defense, adopted a major fiscal plan in February 2025 to significantly increase its defense spending and public investment. The EU launched the €800 billion Rearm Europe plan, rivaling the post-Covid recovery plan in amount. Brussels even proposed relaxing its sacred budgetary rules to facilitate defense spending.

In March 2025, the European Commission unveiled its €150 billion Security Action for Europe (SAFE) funding package—and here’s where it gets interesting: the US was explicitly excluded from accessing these funds. The message couldn’t be clearer: Europe is hedging its bets on American reliability.

The numbers are impressive:

  • EU defense spending reached €343 billion in 2024
  • Defense investments grew by 42% in 2024, reaching a record €106 billion
  • Projections show defense investment climbing to nearly €130 billion in 2025

But numbers alone don’t win wars. European weapons are more expensive due to lack of scale and market fragmentation, and estimates suggest European production must increase significantly, up to five times, to gain a decisive advantage over Russia.

The Ukraine Dilemma: A Test Case for NATO’s Future

Nothing illustrates NATO’s crisis of purpose quite like its collective paralysis on Ukraine.

In December 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio skipped a NATO foreign ministers meeting focused on Ukraine—his rare absence coming after Trump’s 28-point proposal to end the war dismayed European allies. The administration’s draft plan suggested NATO wouldn’t expand further and Ukraine wouldn’t be admitted—breaking a years-long promise.

Reporting suggests senior NATO officials considered deemphasizing Ukraine at the summit, potentially not inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to avoid alienating President Trump. Read that again: NATO contemplated sidelining the victim of Europe’s largest war since 1945 to appease an American president.

The implications terrify European capitals. Most European NATO allies believe that failure to defeat Russia’s invasion will likely lead to a wider war in Europe and provoke aggression elsewhere around the world. If the US won’t sustain support for Ukraine—a non-NATO member—what does that signal about American willingness to defend actual alliance members?

Strategic Autonomy: From Slogan to Survival Strategy

For years, “European strategic autonomy” was a diplomatic phrase that everyone used and nobody quite defined. Not anymore.

2025 reinforced the reality that American attention is finite and increasingly transactional. The question is no longer whether Europe needs strategic autonomy, but whether it can achieve it fast enough.

The obstacles are formidable:

  • The UK depends on the US for its nuclear submarine technology
  • European defense procurement remains largely national, creating inefficiencies
  • The EU’s defense investment gap since the Cold War is estimated at €1.8 trillion
  • Delivery timelines for new capabilities stretch into the late 2020s

Meanwhile, Europe faces a dual squeeze: it must dramatically increase defense spending while managing other fiscal pressures. The activation of the national escape clause of the Stability and Growth Pact gives time to adapt to increased defense spending without immediately cutting other spending, but over the medium term, public finances will need rebalancing.

Some progress is tangible. European defense companies are forming joint ventures—like Rheinmetall (Germany) and Leonardo (Italy), creating an equal joint venture to manufacture tanks. The EU established the €1.5 billion European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) to boost Europe’s defense industry.

But as one analysis starkly noted, what’s missing is not capacity, but bold leadership willing to articulate shared priorities, accept risk, and take responsibility for long-range decisions.

Russia’s Quiet Satisfaction

While NATO debates spending percentages, Moscow watches with satisfaction.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted: “It’s a major upheaval for Europe, and we are watching it”. The entire premise of NATO deterrence depends on convincing adversaries that the alliance will act decisively. When the alliance spends summits projecting unity to compensate for obvious disunity, deterrence erodes.

Trump has a long track record of skepticism toward multilateral institutions and has repeatedly questioned whether the United States should live up to its Article 5 collective defense commitments. For Putin, this isn’t just good fortune—it’s strategic vindication.

The Unasked Questions

The Hague summit was deemed a success because allies agreed on spending targets and avoided public acrimony. But the harmonious summit is actually an indication of its failure to address hard questions facing the Alliance.

Here are the questions NATO isn’t answering:

  • If the US redirects forces to the Indo-Pacific, can European armies fill the gap?
  • Does Europe have the political will to police a Ukraine peace settlement without American forces?
  • Can NATO develop a coherent strategy toward China when European and American interests diverge?
  • What happens when Trump’s demands exceed Europe’s political capacity to deliver?

As one foreign policy expert acknowledged, “there is less concern among serving officials because they don’t like to spend too much time thinking about the unthinkable”—the unthinkable being a Europe completely responsible for its own defense.

Living in the World of Uncertainty

Here’s the brutal truth: European allies are trying to execute a defense transformation that normally takes decades, all while operating under an American security guarantee that has become conditional, unpredictable, and increasingly transactional.

As of April 2025, there is much uncertainty still as to what the Trump administration will do. Few NATO allies have announced significant increases or public commitments to planning for fully independent European defense.

The fundamental problem isn’t just Trump—it’s what comes after. Even if a future administration restores traditional US commitments, Europe has learned it can’t build long-term security on political cycles that change every four years. The current Administration’s behavior has raised questions as to what extent we still share the same values and principles, which has sharpened European awareness that excessive dependency carries strategic risk.

What Comes Next?

The end of American internationalism doesn’t mean the end of NATO—not yet. But it does mean the end of NATO as we’ve known it.

Europe is caught in a painful transition: too dependent on America to go it alone, too wary of American reliability to remain passive, and too slow in building alternatives to escape the dilemma. Without coherence of vision and the willingness to act with conviction, NATO’s deterrence posture risks becoming reactive rather than resilient.

The next few years will answer a question that would have seemed absurd just five years ago: Can the world’s most successful military alliance survive its leading member’s ambivalence about its purpose?

For 75 years, the answer was obvious. Today, for the first time, it’s genuinely uncertain. And in security policy, uncertainty kills deterrence. Europe is learning this lesson the hard way, spending hundreds of billions to hedge against a future where American protection becomes truly conditional—or absent entirely.

The North Atlantic Treaty’s promise was simple: an attack on one is an attack on all. That clarity is gone, replaced by qualifications, conditions, and doubt. Welcome to the post-internationalist world, where even America’s closest allies must now plan for the possibility that, when crisis comes, they’ll be facing it alone.

References & Further Reading

What are your thoughts on NATO’s future? Can Europe achieve true strategic autonomy, or will it remain dependent on American security guarantees? Share your perspective in the comments below, and subscribe to stay informed on the evolving security landscape shaping our world.

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