NATO Leaders Fear Trump More Than Putin

NATO's European leaders fear Vladimir Putin. However, there is someone they fear even more: Donald Trump.

The process wasn't pretty, but the outcome was what NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and the anxious European leaders had hoped for ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague this week.

Mark Rutte set new records in praise and subservience towards U.S. President Donald Trump on the way there. As mentioned, it wasn't pretty.

But in this situation, there are honestly not many alternatives. Rutte was also present at the traumatic NATO summit in 2018 when Donald Trump threatened to leave NATO, then as the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

And everyone knows, without the U.S., there is no functioning defense alliance. Donald Trump once again wavered on the wording regarding Article 5 and whether the U.S. would come to the rescue if a NATO country is attacked, but all the flattery and bowing led him to speak a bit more generously.

"Hit him hard"

How long this more positive mood will last is impossible to say with Trump.

Trump also noted after Mark Rutte's praise that he might "hit him hard" in the future if Rutte changes his mind and no longer likes him.

When NATO was founded in 1949, the alliance's first Secretary General Lionel Ismay said the purpose of NATO was to "keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."

The part about Germany is outdated now. But NATO's primary task is once again to keep the Russians out – and the Americans in.

And the other 31 NATO members hope that U.S. engagement will continue in the future by now promising to significantly ramp up.

The new goal is five percent of GDP on defense, but this includes 1.5 percent on defense-related infrastructure and other things that can be included, like support for Ukraine.

Trump undeniably deserves some credit for getting Europe to finally take its own defense seriously. This has been something that even his predecessors have long urged without much happening.

But it's no wonder that European leaders fear Trump in a bad mood. Today, the U.S. alone accounts for two-thirds of NATO's defense spending. The other 31 make up the last third.

So Europe doesn't have much to counter when Trump wants to downplay criticism of Russia over the war in Ukraine. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was allowed to attend the dinner on Tuesday evening but was not seated at the same table as Trump.

Zelenskyy was not – as at previous NATO summits – invited to sit in on the actual meeting on Wednesday. He did, however, have a brief one-on-one meeting with Trump.

NATO summits conclude with a communiqué and summary. It was 11,000 words long after the meeting in Vilnius 2023, and about 5,000 words long at the meeting in Washington last year.

This year – the first after Russia's invasion with Trump as U.S. president – it was only 454 words long. Last year, Russia was mentioned 43 times in the final document. This year – once.

And this was the first time since 2022 that NATO did not even condemn the Russian invasion. Sure, it states that continued support is promised to Ukraine, but not why it is needed.

The reason is, of course, that this type of criticism against Russia and Vladimir Putin is not something Trump wants to support. This is while Russia has escalated airstrikes against, among others, Kyiv in recent weeks so much that some Kyiv residents are now reconsidering leaving the city.

So yes, NATO's European leaders breathe a sigh of relief that this NATO meeting is over and the U.S. is still in. But for Ukraine, there is not much to celebrate.

Vladimir Putin and Russia continue to grind on at the front, continue to send missiles and drones against Ukrainian cities.