This analysis is free, but with Premium Membership you get MORE. Join today.
by Rod D. Martin
July 6, 2026
I appeared on NTD Newsroom with Don Ma to preview tomorrow’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.
We discuss:
Why NATO must become “partners, not dependents” or risk the end of the alliance
Why redeploying U.S. forces from Germany to Poland makes NATO more effective and less of a local-economy welfare program
How Europe funded Putin’s Ukraine invasion, and how Trump is ending that
What about Greenland? And is there a win-win solution?
It’s 13 minutes of in-depth analysis you won’t get anywhere else. Watch the interview, and pass it along!
Our full discussion after this:
Nothing matters more than educating the next generation with the values we cherish. The Herzog Foundation is making that possible. Learn more here.
Full discussion:
Don Ma: Joining us now to look ahead to next week’s summit is Rod Martin, a geopolitical analyst and the founder and CEO of Martin Capital. Rod, thank you for joining us. The Iran war was a source of disagreement between the United States and some NATO members. President Trump said he was disappointed — unhappy that some members had not offered help quickly enough. How do you expect the dynamics to look going into this summit?
Rod D. Martin: I think it’ll be a surprisingly quiet summit. We have sorted a lot of the problems. But the truth is, when the president says that the status quo is ridiculous, he may be understating it.
I just saw the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland interviewed on the BBC, and he pointed out that Britain is spending something like $60 billion a year on defense and $360 billion on welfare. That $60 billion is about one-twentieth of what America is spending — and Britain is the sixth-largest economy in the world. These guys just are not doing their part.
And when you add to that the denial of access to bases the United States has had for decades, in many cases that we paid for, and the denial of overflight rights by Spain and others — this is simply not acceptable.
That said, the point is increasingly getting through. We saw it a week ago when the EU ratified the trade deal the president worked out with Ursula von der Leyen at St. Andrews. Europeans like to be surly; they like to talk back. But at the end of the day, they get on board. We’re already seeing that with the new aid package to Ukraine and with a number of NATO countries moving expeditiously toward their 5% of GDP defense goal.
The problem is that the United States, on the far western side of the alliance, and Poland and others on the far eastern side, are stepping up and getting things done — while the countries in the middle are freeloading on the rest.
Don Ma: The United States pays more than any other country into NATO, and when the U.S. asked for help, these countries didn’t deliver. What would a fair situation look like? Should there be consequences?
Rod D. Martin: It’s not just more than any other country. Until a couple of years ago, we were paying more than 70% of the entire defense expenditures of the whole alliance — an alliance of 32 countries. So they were paying 29.5 percent, and we were paying 70.5 percent. That’s gotten better; it’s now roughly 60/40. But it’s still absurd.
The British Navy is essentially non-functional at this point. And it hasn’t been that many years since Germany was showing up at NATO exercises with infantry armed with broomsticks because they didn’t have enough rifles. This is a joke.
The Deputy Prime Minister of Poland made the point well when he said to the BBC reporter, “You obviously aren’t afraid of any threats. You don’t think anybody’s going to hurt you.” And that’s just ridiculous.
We have to get these allies to actually be allies, not welfare recipients. A perfect example is the announcement this week that we are going ahead with permanent basing of U.S. forces in Poland. This is a very sensible move. It puts U.S. forces close to the action. If the Russians were to attack NATO, they would have to attack Poland first — they’re not going to attack Germany first. Basing troops in Germany and Italy and Spain, when those countries won’t give us overflight rights and won’t let us use our bases properly, is just welfare to their local economies. These are large, wealthy economies that ought to be able to take care of their own defense.
The president is not going to put up with that anymore. The movement of U.S. forces to Poland is good strategically and good for the alliance. But it also makes a point: if you won’t step up and do your part, we will leave you behind.
Don Ma: Are there any mechanisms right now to actually enforce these agreements — any consequences for a country that doesn’t hold up its end?
Rod D. Martin: Clearly not enough. But this is an incredibly interconnected relationship, and I’m not overly concerned about allies stepping up in a real crisis. The truth is, we didn’t need them that much in the Iran war, and they knew it. I wouldn’t put too much weight on that episode.
There will be a big reaffirmation in Ankara of Article 5 — all of us will say, “Yes, we will come to each other’s aid no matter what.” And I don’t doubt that’s true in a genuine crisis that affects the security of all members. But the problem isn’t actually willingness, which has of late been in too-short supply. The problem is that the Europeans aren’t spending enough on their own defense to be meaningful partners if a bigger crisis actually came.
If the Russians somehow managed to muster the ability to invade Poland and march on Berlin — which they’re not going to do; the Ukrainians are whipping them right now — I don’t think any ally would fail to fight alongside us. I just don’t think they’d have the troops to fight alongside us meaningfully. They are needlessly outsourcing their defense to the United States, and the president is simply not going to pay for that anymore.
A lot of our allies are beginning to get the message. Moving just 5,000 troops to Poland put a huge exclamation point on everything he’s been saying. I think they’re going to hear it again in Ankara.
Don Ma: Where do you stand on whether NATO membership is a net benefit for the United States?
Rod D. Martin: It absolutely is. I am not against NATO. I am against the way our allies are treating us within NATO. They’re not taking this seriously. They’re using the alliance as a way to subsidize their own welfare states and industrial policies — and we took a big swing at the latter with the new trade deal just ratified a week ago. That’s a significant step forward in rebalancing things.
But they have to actually meet the 5 percent target, and what they spend it on matters as much as how much they spend. If they disguise domestic spending as defense-related infrastructure, that isn’t helpful. We need them building ammunition, tanks, missiles, and fighter jets.
There are people on the American side of the Atlantic who get worked up about that — “Oh, the Europeans will be taking business from U.S. arms manufacturers.” No. We don’t have enough arms manufacturing capacity across the entire alliance to meet the fullness of the need. These countries need to be building like crazy. That will help them deal with their own China-induced industrial challenges. And of course they also need to be buying from us. All of these things are interrelated and they’re moving in the right direction.
The ultimate enforcement mechanism, if they simply won’t step up, is that the United States may shut this all down. And the longer our allies contemplate this, the more they realize it isn’t bluster, actually is possible, and really isn’t something they can afford to allow happen.
Don Ma: Do you see any scenario where the United States might not come to the aid of certain members?
Rod D. Martin: Trump occasionally saber-rattles and makes that point, and it’s amusing. But the truth is, if it weren’t for the United States, Ukraine would be a Russian province today — because the Europeans have actually spent, since Putin’s invasion, twice as much on energy from Russia as they have on aid to Ukraine.
Our European allies, who constantly lecture us about not doing enough for Ukraine, are actually financing Putin’s war. That has to change, and it is changing. The trade deal addresses a crucial element of it: $700 billion in new European energy purchases from the United States, directly replacing Russian supply. That is a massive boon — not just to American producers, though that’s part of the story — but to alliance security as a whole.
Europe was caught nearly shivering in the dark in the winter of 2022 because it had made itself completely dependent on Russian fuel. This president, in his first term, did everything in his power to keep them from doing that. They did it anyway under Biden, who greenlit the Nord Stream 2 pipeline essentially on his first day in office. They set themselves up for a disaster, and then marveled when the disaster came. They’re going to have to get more serious about these things — but we are seeing progress.
Don Ma: Before I let you go, Rod — one more question on Greenland. NATO member Denmark will be at the summit. Do you see friction there when President Trump attends?
Rod D. Martin: We have very quietly been having talks with the Danes and with the Greenlanders all year, and where that stands is a bit of an open question — they’re keeping it close to the vest. But the truth is, Denmark and Greenland are not as cozy as they might appear.
There is tremendous resentment in Greenland over things like the Danish program of forced sterilizations of Greenlandic women, which continued well into the 1990s. Denmark has been stringing Greenland along financially, but Greenland can’t do without the too-small subsidy. Nor can Denmark afford to develop the island in a way that would give its people a future. So you have to reach a point where Greenland feels secure enough to change its current arrangement — and if that point ever comes, they will.
The ultimate solution, as I’ve discussed before, is independence for Greenland guaranteed by a compact of free association with the United States, very similar to what we have with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia. They get all the benefits of independence with none of the costs. The United States would go in and develop their economy — Greenland has enormous resources that are poential game-changers for them and for us — and they would have the ability, if they choose, to become a tax haven not unlike Bermuda, just with colder weather.
This would be better for everyone. It would even be better for Denmark, because Denmark cannot afford the subsidy it’s currently giving Greenland. We just have to get to a point where everyone can be calm and work through it.
But if the president hadn’t been the way he likes to be, this issue never would have come to the table at all. Very much like the birthright citizenship case — the president lost that one, but he got four votes out of nine for his position and made it a top-tier conservative issue. If he hadn’t forced that issue, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. It would just be fringe talk. Now it’s a live conversation, and I think we’re eventually going to win. But someone has to push these ideas to the fore for them to get enough attention to be discussed, and that’s exactly what the president has done on Greenland.
Don Ma: Great comments, Rod. And of course, wishing you a happy Fourth of July weekend.
Rod D. Martin: And you as well. Thank you.
