WASHINGTON – Leaders representing the United States and Russia met this week to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine as European NATO leaders and the Ukrainians themselves were iced out of the negotiations despite their enormous stake in the issue. But it’s only one snub in a long line of affronts to NATO at the hands of President Donald Trump, dating back to his first term.
“NATO countries must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS. Very Unfair!” Trump tweeted back in 2018. He accused member countries of not pulling their weight in defense spending, calling them “delinquent” and the alliance “obsolete.”
Since taking office for the second time last month, he has again singled out this issue. In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos just days after his inauguration, Trump demanded the alliance increase the target for defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product, more than double the current 2% guideline.
NATO introduced the 2% goal in 2014. At the time, only three of 28 member countries met that target; estimates for 2024 show 23 countries reaching it, out of 32 (four countries joined in the interim). It’s generally agreed that the jump over the last decade is likely due to several factors, including pressure applied by the Trump administration during its first term.
But even though NATO members’ defense spending is on the rise, Trump has made clear he believes it is not enough.
Why 5%?
“For a number of members of the alliance, that 5% number is eye-watering,” said Susan Colbourn, a professor at the University of Toronto whose research specializes in NATO and European security.
For reference: in 2024, the U.S. spent an estimated 3.4% of its GDP on defense – more than the 2% guideline but well short of the 5% Trump envisions.
Yet speaking to reporters after his comments in Davos, Trump declined to commit the U.S. to the 5% mark, setting up a double standard that will likely make the new 5% target a tough sell to allies.
“Nobody's going to go to 5% if we don't,” said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Kaine and his committee colleague Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) both acknowledged that NATO countries do need to spend more on defense, an assessment widely shared by experts.
“Increased defense spending, particularly by the non-U.S. members of the alliance, is absolutely a good investment and necessary,” said Colbourn.
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, has already indicated that defense spending must increase, and Colbourn expects the issue to be on the agenda at NATO’s June summit at The Hague.
How the additional funds should be spent remains unclear.
“You shouldn’t increase defense spending just to increase defense spending,” said Katherine Dahlstrand, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “You should be doing so with a clear goal in mind as to where you're going to put that money. What can I spend it on?“
Dahlstrand said that much of that money should be going towards equipment, including air defense and munitions stock. Currently, NATO policy commits members to putting 20% of their defense spending towards new equipment.
The Future of NATO
“The cynical interpretation,” said Colbourn, “is that 5% is calibrated intentionally to be so high that it is impossible for the allies to meet, and then could be used as a pretext for President Trump to in some way revise or overhaul the United States participation in NATO.”
During his first term, Trump reportedly discussed pulling the U.S. out of NATO with aides on multiple occasions. The current Trump administration did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
An exit via executive order, however, is no longer an easy option. A bill passed by Congress in 2023 included a measure, introduced by Sen. Kaine and former senator and now Secretary of State Marco Rubio, requiring a two-thirds Senate majority to withdraw from NATO.
But Trump doesn’t need to officially pull the U.S. out of NATO to cause serious damage to the alliance, Colbourn said.
The backbone of NATO is Article V of its charter, the mutual self-defense clause that calls on all members to come to the aid of any one member country that is attacked.
But each time Trump threatens America’s commitment to NATO allies, for example, by questioning America’s Article V pledge or contemplating the seizure of Greenland, a territory belonging to NATO member Denmark, the damage is felt, said Colbourn.
“All of those signals and statements erode the credibility of the alliance itself,” Colbourn said. “It's ultimately based on things like trust and confidence that the core pledge at the heart of the treaty will work.”
If NATO falls apart, she said, it would put the world in “a period of considerable realignment in the overall patterns of international politics.”
With Russia’s war in Ukraine ongoing and China sizing up Taiwan, she noted parallels to the world order of the 19th century, when great powers carved up the globe into spheres of influence. The delicacy of this moment is not lost on lawmakers.
“At this critical moment, when Vladimir Putin continues to inflict his campaign, his war against democracy, we need that NATO commitment to be stronger than ever,” said Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.), the vice ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“And at the end of the day, this is about our allies,” he added. “A safe Europe means a safe America.”
Sasha Draeger-Mazer is a national security reporter for Medill News Service and studies journalism and political science at Northwestern University.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.