President Biden has reaffirmed America’s steadfast support for NATO and said the alliance was stronger than ever. But former President Donald Trump, running again for the 2024 election, has repeatedly questioned NATO’s value. While he endorsed NATO’s clause of collective defense, he clashed with NATO leaders over funding and U.S. troop numbers. Leaders of both political parties have long urged Europe to pay more for its own defense.

As on many other issues, Trump was right and his critics wrong. Since the end of the Cold War, every president has tried to cajole European nations to invest in their defense, and every president has failed to make progress. Quite the opposite, actually. It has been decades since all our European allies have lived up to their treaty obligations, and they have been able to do this because America hasn’t held them to account.

This is completely unacceptable. Americans must *insist* that Europeans pull their weight in NATO. This is *entirely* within Europe's economic capability and fully consistent with post-war history. Europe had very serious militaries 30 years ago. 1/https://t.co/mzEmIrDCC1

— Elbridge Colby (@ElbridgeColby) December 11, 2023

The fact is that European nations haven’t been capable of defending themselves without American help since the end of World War II, and during the Cold War, we were not terribly displeased by that fact. It gave the US leverage during the Cold War because European countries were rightly concerned about “Finlandization”–the process of losing autonomy to one’s enemies due to weakness. A strong alliance with the US and reasonably sized militaries that could supplement US forces served everybody’s interests.

With the end of the Cold War, Europeans went all-in on the “peace dividend” and, over the years, have essentially disarmed themselves, partly banking on the US commitment to the defense of our European allies and partly convinced that history had ended and peace would reign–at least on the Eurasian continent. Russia may direct its military forces south but would never dare to look West.

The result? European countries don’t really have militaries at all–and that is hardly an exaggeration. If the US chose not to defend European countries from an external attack, they would collapse like a house of cards.

In recent months, the momentum for aid to Ukraine has slowed to a crawl in the United States, and for a good reason: Ukraine, by itself, hardly matters to US interests. It matters a great deal to European countries, of course, because both food and fuel are either produced there or travel through or by the country, but Americans only give a tinker’s damn out of a sense of fair play. We think Putin sucks and invading Ukraine was wrong, but strategically it matters not at all.

Taiwan matters. Ukraine? Aside from the abstract moral issues, which are a bit muddled actually, who really should care?

Given that, you would think that European countries would be pouring resources into helping Ukraine, and they likely would but for the fact that they have no resources to pour. They don’t have enough ammunition to defend their own countries should they be called on to do so, and they have no means to make or acquire more. Their defense industrial base barely exists, and that which does is basically corporate welfare.

Military spending among NATO countries fell from about 3% of annual economic output during the Cold War to about 1.3% by 2014, according to NATO data. Things began to change after the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea, but only slowly. In the past decade, EU defense spending rose 20%, according to the European Parliament. Over the same period, Russia and China boosted their defense budgets by almost 300% and close to 600%, respectively.

NATO countries are supposed to spend a minimum of 2% of their GDP on defense, which is, by the way, historically low already. They are nowhere close, and the fixed costs of running a military are so high that spending money on silly things like weapons and ammunition falls to the bottom of the list when it comes to spending.

Germany’s army, which at the end of the Cold War had half a million men in West Germany and another 300,000 in East Germany, now has 180,000 personnel. West Germany alone had more than 7,000 battle tanks by the 1980s; reunified Germany now has 200, only half of which are likely operational, according to government officials. The country’s industry can make only about three tanks a month, these officials said.

“The armed forces are lacking in everything,” Eva Högl, the parliamentary commissioner for Germany’s armed forces, said as she presented the findings of her report earlier this year. German military bases not only lack armaments and ammunition, but functioning toilets and internet, she said. One attack helicopter unit has been waiting a decade to be fitted with helmets, her findings show.

The Netherlands disbanded its last tank unit in 2011, folding the remaining few tanks into the German army. Conscription across most European countries was scrapped after the Cold War.

Helmets. Germany won’t spend money on helmets. In fact, the Germany military barely exists as a fighting force at all.

The Bad News Bundeswehr: An Examination of the Truly Dire State of Germany's Military https://t.co/FO3KI95Hcx via @derspiegel

— Stefan Forss (@StefanForss46) January 21, 2023

Germany has, theoretically, excellent military equipment. But that is only in theory. In fact, what they have doesn’t work and couldn’t fight if it did, because there are few weapons to employ.

One example: The commander of the 10th Tank Division reported to his superiors that during an exercise with 18 Puma infantry fighting vehicles, all 18 of them broke down. It was a worrisome incident given that the ultra-modern weapons systems are a key component of the NATO rapid-reaction force. There is a lack of munitions and equipment – and arms deliveries to Ukraine have only worsened the situation. “The cupboards are almost bare,” said Alfons Mais, inspector general of the German army, at the beginning of the war. André Wüstner, head of the German Bundeswehr Association, seconds him: “We continue to be in free fall.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that Germany now depends on Poland to defend it from attack from the east, however unlikely that is in the short to medium term. Were there a war between Poland and Germany, I would put my money on Poland–not that the Polish could subdue the German population easily, but they likely could wipe the German military off the map.

Were I a European, I wouldn’t freak out about the sorry state of German, French, or even British militaries because the United States and other NATO allies are still committed to their territorial defense. In fact, given how easy it is to free ride on the United States, every Western European country should pour every extra dollar into pushing back on the migrant influx.

We should certainly encourage European countries to stop the flow of anti-Western immigrants. Still, we should return to the Trump policies of demanding European countries become self-sufficient in defense. As it is, NATO is barely relevant as a military alliance, and militarily, and European militaries are a net negative to our fighting capabilities should war erupt in Europe. If the US remains committed to defending Europe, we should demand basing rights and substantial financial contributions and quit pretending that Western European countries have any military relevance aside from fighting pirates.

Of course, the US has let our defense industrial base slip, and we should revitalize it. We need the ability to produce ammunition more quickly and a much more robust naval repair and construction infrastructure. But we are no paper tiger. If called upon, the US could wipe Russia’s conventional military away in a few weeks. China? That is a tougher nut to crack. It would hurt us a lot to fight to a stalemate.

The United States needs to focus its military investments on defending trade routes in the Pacific region and backing our allies there. China is rapidly becoming the regional hegemon with the ability to bully anybody it wants to, and that is a threat to American and world prosperity. We shouldn’t have to worry about Europe–the EU has the financial capacity and the population base to defend itself easily. It relies on us because, well, why not?

Our elite, being hostile to the concept of national interest, apparently dismisses the idea that the United States has any right to push Europe to defend itself because they do not distinguish between European countries and the US. We are one big happy family.

But that is silly. Our Asian allies are far more reliable and, if push came to shove, more important to our economy and well-being than Germany, France, or Italy. If we were forced to choose–which would be, admittedly, very bad–I would choose to ensure the security of our Asian allies before worrying about Germany.

I would choose to defend Poland before Germany for that matter. They are a useful ally.

Germany? Thanks for the bases. Good luck.

The reason why the US has accepted the role of global hegemon is that our own economic well-being depends on freedom of trade, and the more stable the world is the better off we are. Of course, many of our military adventures have decreased, not increased stability, but on balance, the lack of major-power wars has been vital to increasing the world’s–and our own–prosperity. US hegemony has helped prevent major power wars.

With the rise of China Europe has to pick up the slack in Europe. The US can’t impose peace in Europe and in Asia, and frankly, it’s not clear we can impose peace in Asia at all. And for those who think we shouldn’t try, just know that pretty much every high-tech item you own is built in Asia or with Asian components. And it’s not just phones; it’s everything. The economy is global. We can, perhaps, decouple from China over time, but not every single Asian country and Taiwan is a key bottleneck in the computer economy.

Perhaps, if we chose to, we could, over decades, reverse our reliance on world trade (at an enormous financial cost and a huge reduction in our prosperity), but for now, we are stuck defending Asian shipping lanes and the status quo.

And we can’t do that while being responsible for the defense of Europe.