NATO’s Trump-Proofing Efforts Are Floundering

In its attempt to Trump-proof aid to Ukraine, NATO recently floated an idea for a 100 billion euro ($107 billion) multiyear aid package to be agreed on at the upcoming summit in Washington. Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said in early April that he wished “to shield the mechanism against the winds of political change.”

But it seemed member states had not been consulted. The pushback was quick from key NATO countries including France and Germany. They wanted to know whether this package would be in addition to or a part of the yearly expenditure that NATO has thus far allocated. Any decisions were deferred pending further clarification—and that clarification involved a lowering of expectations.

“The package is still being discussed, but I think the figure will be around what has been given over the last two years and not in addition,” a senior NATO diplomat told Foreign Policy on the condition of anonymity considering the sensitivity of the matter. Two other diplomats familiar with the discussions agreed with that assessment and said the allies are simply discussing a continuation of the billions of dollars spent every year on arms and equipment and training.

Stoltenberg promptly revised his proposal and said in May that “allies have provided approximately 40 billion euros worth of military aid to Ukraine each year” and that they should maintain “at least” current levels of support for as long as required.

A senior NATO official who spoke at length to Foreign Policy said all Stoltenberg wants “is to make sure there’s a pledge by NATO allies to continue long-term support to Ukraine, and he thinks it should be pledged now.”

Many in the alliance think a pact should be agreed on before the U.S. presidential election and while the United States still has a government that backs Ukraine against Russia’s unwarranted invasion. But the squabbling over how much money should be promised has once again exposed confusion among member states and their reticence to increase aid for an indeterminate future.

That may get worse if Donald Trump returns as U.S. president. It is widely believed that it was Joe Biden and his administration that gave NATO the necessary push—and mechanisms—that proved instrumental in thwarting the Russian offensive.

Yet internal disagreements in the alliance are just one part of the much bigger challenge confronting Europeans if Trump cuts off aid entirely and abandons Europe to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s designs. Trump has said he will solve the conflict within a day and let Putin do whatever the hell he wants if Europeans don’t increase their defense spending.

Foreign Policy has learned that European allies are organizing efforts to safeguard the pathway of military support to Ukraine around the three so-called pillars of money, membership, and mission. They are also scrambling to put in place a separate but intertwined strategy to appease Trump in hopes that he won’t withdraw from NATO.

The trouble is that the Europeans have no clue what he would do once in office and there is only so much they can do to Trump-proof aid to Ukraine and the future of the alliance itself.

According to a NATO source, the United States has provided nearly half of the 40 billion euros in aid each year over the last two years. If Trump decides to tighten the purse strings and Europe manages to send the rest, Ukraine will still lose a substantial amount of critical military equipment. Moreover, a NATO diplomat aware of the ongoing talks said any future financial assurances to be made in Washington are nonbinding. It is a “political goal” to offer Ukraine predictability and not a “guarantee” since governments keep changing and with them their politics.

Ukraine’s membership in the alliance may be further delayed if Trump wins the election. The Center for Renewing America, a think tank formed in 2021 by a former official in Trump’s cabinet, has argued against NATO expansion.

The allies are currently drafting a mission for Ukraine to be unveiled at the Washington summit, and that includes shifting control of the U.S.-led Ukraine Defense Contact Group to NATO. (The group was established by U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the then-chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff to coordinate Western support.) This would allow the Europeans to supply whatever they can if Trump cuts off U.S. supplies.

The senior NATO official explained that currently the International Donor Coordination Center (IDCC), which is mainly U.S.-led but functions with substantial support from the United Kingdom, assesses the weapons Ukraine needs and brings them all together to be transported to the embattled nation. This would soon be coordinated under NATO’s umbrella. In addition, the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine, or SAG-U—also set up by the United States but with a substantial Canadian contribution—provides training to Ukrainian forces. He said the coordination of this, too, would move directly under the control of the alliance. However, the NATO-led Ukraine mission would still be headed by U.S. Army Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the NATO supreme allied commander Europe, who “will just wear a different hat.”

But then again, the official admitted, “Europeans could keep providing aid, but whether it is enough for Ukraine to hold the line is another question.”

There is a general sense in Brussels that the best strategy to deal with Trump is appeasement.

The allies are expected to announce an increase in defense spending to 2 percent next month. It is timed to benefit NATO-friendly incumbent President Joe Biden at the hustings yet gives in to Trump, who has been asking Europeans to shell out more. In June, Stoltenberg said that “23 allies are going to spend 2 percent of GDP or more on defense this year.”

In addition, the official said the rollout of the NATO mission would reduce U.S. troop deployment and deploy more Europeans over time. He said the “cost to the U.S. in terms of money and troops will dramatically reduce, and the burden will shift.”

European allies are trying to Trump-proof NATO, but it’s clear that they are also cajoling Trump, perhaps because they realize that European defense and deterrence against Russia are incomplete without U.S. defense capabilities.

Rafael Loss, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said France and the U.K. possess nuclear weapons but not as many. The “U.S. arsenal is the backbone of NATO’s strategic deterrence,” he said. The United States also leads in conventional capabilities such as a higher level of readiness of U.S. armed forces compared with their counterparts in Europe.

But the biggest gap in the European defense arsenal is satellite-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) abilities. In 2022, U.S. ISR proved critical in spotting an amassing of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border, which gave the country and the West time to prepare against the invasion.

The United States is also capable of air-to-air refueling and has large aircraft for transporting heavy equipment such as tanks, while the Europeans “have few of them, which means slow reinforcement,” Loss added.

“The U.S. contributes the bulk of equipment to NATO operations. If these were to be withdrawn either if Trump decides to limit U.S.’s involvement, or if Biden is tied with China and Taiwan—the same capabilities would be used there—then the EU will face a significant gap,” he said. “These capabilities are expensive to procure and complicated to operate, and it could take Europeans a decade to fill the gaps.”

Experts say Trump will hail any increase in defense spending as his own victory but he may still keep asking for more and ask them to match Poland’s whopping 4 percent. And if we go by the Center for Renewing America, a marginal reduction in troops is unlikely to impress him.

The think tank advocates a “dormant NATO” and says “European manpower” should be the “primary defense of Europe’s frontiers, with America as a balancer of last resort instead of a perpetual American forward presence.” (There are 100,000 U.S. troops deployed in Europe in different roles and capacities.) But NATO is promising to replace merely a few hundred Americans deployed in largely administrative roles in the Ukrainian context in the IDCC and SAG-U.

A month before Americans decide NATO’s fate, Stoltenberg will hand the reins to Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister often described as a Trump whisperer. “We should stop moaning and whining and nagging about Trump,” Rutte said in February at the Munich Security Conference. “We have to work with whoever is on the dance floor.” With the far right rising in Europe, more like-minded politicians will offer to whisper in Trump’s ears, but that could turn out to be a whole different nightmare.