Europe Deserves Its Humiliation

By Rich Lowry on Feb 17, 2025

Europe has been warned, and warned again.

Still, it has been reduced to a near-fainting fit -- and, in the case of one German official, actual tears -- over the Trump administration's tough words about its deficient military spending and U.S. moves to begin negotiating on its own with Russia over the Ukraine war.

In response, French President Emmanuel Macron called an emergency summit of European leaders, which his advisers insisted wasn't an emergency summit at all, but merely a rapidly assembled informal meeting.

Whatever the nomenclature, there are signs that Europe is beginning to get the memo -- or, more precisely, beginning to read a memo that it's been sent repeatedly for years and buried somewhere under piles of documents celebrating its own so-called soft power.

Back in 2011, Europe received a stern talking to from a bumptious U.S. official who insisted that it faced "a dim if not dismal future" and that NATO was headed for "irrelevance."

This rude American was none other than President Barack Obama's defense secretary, Robert Gates. As a holdover from the George W. Bush administration, Gates was a figure with unassailable bipartisan credentials, and yet sounded a little like Vice President J.D. Vance and Trump's defense secretary Pete Hegseth.

"The blunt reality," Gates said in his speech, "is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress -- and in the American body politic writ large -- to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense."

In the form of the second Trump administration, the patience has dwindled to almost nothing.

Serious countries need serious militaries, and a military alliance like NATO depends on the capabilities of its member countries. This is so obvious it should go without saying, but it's been an inconvenient truth for a Europe that has preferred to spend on everything else while relying on the might of the United States for security and power projection.

NATO countries vowed that they'd spend at least 2% of GDP on defense back in 2014, and yet only 23 of 32 NATO members have reached the threshold. Poland and the Baltic states are among the top spenders, while France and Germany barely make 2%, and Canada and Italy are beneath it.

The trend has been upward but nowhere near adequate. According to The New York Times, "There is consensus among officials and analysts that Europe lacks crucial elements of defense like integrated air and missile defense, long-range precision artillery and missiles, satellites, and air-to-air refueling tankers."

Is that all?

Trump is calling for 5% of GDP for NATO members, which has all the hallmarks of a tactic to get Europe as high as possible even if they don't reach this benchmark (the U.S. itself spends about 3.4%). NATO is planning to make 3% percent or 3.5% its goal later this year.

President Trump and his team prefer vinegar to honey in making their case around the world. It may be needlessly abrasive, but there's no doubt that it gets people's attention. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told member countries to stop "complaining" and come up with concrete, positive ideas, while Ursula von der Leyen, the president of European Commission, said "Europe's security is at a turning point" and Europe needs "an urgency mindset" and "a surge of defense."

Even if Trump were less insistent about spending and had warmer feelings about the alliance, the fact is that the United States may at some point be consumed with responding to a crisis in the Pacific, and Europe will have to be prepared to defend its backyard regardless.

If Europe won't spend more for the sake of its own security or the good of the alliance, it should -- when its embarrassing panic subsides -- at least do it out of self-respect.

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(Rich Lowry is on Twitter @RichLowry)