NATO Finally Steps Up - Trump’s 5% Victory and the End of Europe’s Free Ride
As NATO's Secretary General admits what the Establishment denied — that without Trump, Europe would have let itself remain indefensible — the alliance finally becomes a real partnership.
Don’t miss yesterday’s essay, “Victory in Iran, and A Note to our Readers”.
by Rod D. Martin
June 25, 2025
For years, Donald Trump was mocked for telling NATO the truth. Our foreign policy establishment howled — for nearly a decade — that demanding our allies pay their fair share would “shatter the alliance” (which raises the question of why we would want such allies).
Now, after all the kicking and screaming, NATO is doing exactly what Trump demanded from the start.
At the 2025 NATO Summit, Secretary General Mark Rutte — a Dutch globalist — uttered a sentence that would have been the headline of the week in any other week: “We should stop whining about Trump. He was right.”
With those eight words, Rutte publicly conceded the obvious: that the Atlantic alliance has long been a one-way street. That Europe has outsourced its survival to the American taxpayer, and then been horrified! shocked! when called out on that. That since the start of the war in Ukraine the Europeans have actually sent twice as much cash to Moscow (for energy) as to Kiev (because they have entirely too few armaments to send). And that Donald Trump alone had the guts to say it, and the leverage to change it.
This week’s summit produced the most consequential policy shift in NATO’s post–Cold War history: a commitment by each member to defense spending of 5% of GDP, not as a ceiling or an aspirational dream, but as the new baseline.
That will effectively double NATO’s strength in a relatively short time. And not a moment too soon. It will also transform NATO from a collection of hectoring dependents into a true partnership.
In Rutte’s words to the President, “This would not have happened if you would not have been elected in 2016 and re‑elected last year… so I want to thank you.”