Donald Trump's familiar tirade about America bankrolling its allies showed cracks last week at NATO's gathering in Ankara. The president's demands that Europe pull its weight sounded tired, and his claims of "tremendous love" at the summit contradicted his earlier scolding. Yet beneath the theatrical posturing lies a legitimate question that Washington's political establishment has largely avoided: what does America actually get from its alliances?
Trump first aired this grievance in 1987, taking out full-page newspaper ads to argue that the country was overextended globally. He revived the complaint during his first term, threatening NATO withdrawal and battering allies across the board. This time around, however, the gambit is losing momentum. Europe has spent the intervening period strengthening its defenses and reducing its dependency on American security guarantees. Trump's threat of abandonment, once terrifying to European capitals, now rings hollow.
The math of actually withdrawing from an almost 80-year-old alliance tilts heavily against Trump. Such a move would spark a domestic political firestorm he cannot easily weather. It would also look weak, something Trump abhors. Europe's growing military capacity and confidence, meanwhile, have changed the equation entirely. The leverage Trump once wielded through the specter of abandonment has largely evaporated.
Washington should recognize this shift as progress, not defeat. American and European security interests remain fundamentally aligned around maintaining peace and prosperity in the region. Those shared interests, not the NATO bureaucracy itself, are what actually hold the alliance together. Strip away the real strategic benefits, and institutional structures mean nothing.
Yet the proper response to Trump's reckless NATO bashing is not for his opponents to swing wildly in the opposite direction. Many Democratic and Republican leaders have embraced American alliances with an enthusiasm that borders on the religious. They treat alliance commitments as moral imperatives rather than strategic calculations that must deliver real benefits to the American people.
The Biden administration's relationship with Israel offers the starkest example. An unconditional embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu pulled Washington directly into the Gaza tragedy, forcing American credibility into alignment with a strategy that has catastrophic humanitarian costs. Similar uncritical loyalty to Ukraine, Taiwan, and European allies has locked Washington into support that lacks clear exit conditions or honest debate about American costs and interests.
An alliance fundamentally means one thing: a commitment to fight a war for another country. That commitment may be spelled out in formal treaties or implicit in years of security cooperation, but the cost is immense. American leaders cannot responsibly tie the nation to allies that do not deliver genuine benefits back to the American people in return.
The NATO summit in Ankara likely signals a recalibration rather than a rupture. Europe is moving toward a position of greater equality with Washington rather than dependency. A more balanced partnership could actually prove more durable and productive for both sides. That shift should be welcomed, not resisted as betrayal of the postwar order.
Future American leaders have a chance to split the difference: reject Trump's scorched-earth approach while also abandoning the reflexive alliance enthusiasm that has led Washington astray. This requires clear-eyed assessment of which partnerships genuinely serve American interests, honest conversations about costs and commitments, and the willingness to show strategic independence even when it creates friction with friends. The world still needs constructive American leadership, but it needs American leadership that is realistic about what power actually achieves and what the American people should reasonably be asked to bear.
Author James Rodriguez: "Trump's NATO complaints deserve dismissal for their theatrics, but not for asking whether America has gotten a fair deal from its alliances."
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