Can NATO survive without the United States?
Trump blusters about this and that almost every day and I doubt that he remembers half what he is saying unless someone is writing it down (so that they can walk most of it back the next day) so that he can deny saying it or explain what it was he meant to say.
NATO is more than alliance it shaped the world we live in today.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Europe is staring down the barrel of a stark new reality where the United States being the backbone of NATO – the alliance that has guaranteed the continent’s security for almost 80 years – is no longer a given.
President Donald Trump’s public animosity towards Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky, his willingness to embrace Russia’s Vladimir Putin and recent comments casting doubt over whether he would defend NATO allies “if they don’t pay” have all forced European leaders to start thinking the previously unthinkable - is the US a reliable security partner at a time when the continent is being rocked by its biggest war since the 1940s?
But NATO without the US is far from impotent, with more than a million troops and modern weaponry at its disposal from the 31 other countries in the alliance. It also has the wealth and technological knowhow to defend itself without the US, analysts say.
The US and Germany are the biggest contributors to NATO’s military budget, civil budget and security investment program, at almost 16% each, followed by the UK at 11% and France at 10%, a NATO fact sheet says. Analysts say it wouldn’t take much for Europe to make up for the loss of Washington’s contribution.
If European countries unite and buy the right equipment, Europe “could pose a serious conventional and … nuclear deterrent” to Russia, Ben Schreer, Europe executive director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said in a Zoom call with CNN and other journalists in late February.
“Europe alone (still has) a capacity to muster the resources it would need to defend itself, it’s just a question of whether (it is) willing to,” Schreer said.
And that’s the key question. Over more than 75 years and the administrations of 14 different US presidents, including the first Trump administration, the US has been the sinew that has kept the alliance together.
hose decades of trans-Atlantic solidarity may have come to an end in recent days, analysts say.
Trump’s Oval Office blow-up with Zelensky - after which he halted US aid to Kyiv - “felt like a deeper rupture, not just with Ukraine, but with the US ‘free world’ strategy from Truman through Reagan,” Dan Fried, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, said on the council’s website.
John Lough, a former NATO official who is now an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, sees an even more profound split in the alliance.
“It simply feels that the United States sees Europe more as a competitor, a rival, than an ally,” Lough told CNN, adding that because of that the commitment for Washington to defend NATO allies is somewhat in doubt.
It’s a fracture that Lough sees as unrepairable.
“Once you start to lose part of that commitment, you effectively lose it all,” Lough said.
Some people in European circles are starting to ask whether Washington should be described “in some ways as an enemy,” he said.
But some analysts say a NATO without the US is not a bad idea.
“As soon as US allies become convinced that they can no longer trust in US capabilities to defend them when push comes to shove , they will rush to pick up the slack and work towards growing their own capabilities,” Moritz Graefrath, a postdoctoral fellow in security and foreign policy at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, wrote in War on the Rocks last year.
“It is in this sense that — perhaps counterintuitively — a withdrawal of US forces will create an even stronger, not weaker, Europe,” Graefrath wrote.
Prime Minister of NATO member Poland, Donald Tusk, thinks this process has started already.
“Europe as a whole is truly capable of winning any military, financial, economic confrontation with Russia - we are simply stronger,” he said ahead of a European Union summit this week. “We just had to start believing in it. And today it seems to be happening.”
What does Europe have?
In concept, a European military could be formidable.
Turkey has NATO’s largest armed forces after the United States, with 355,200 active military personnel, according to the Military Balance 2025, compiled by the IISS. It’s followed by France (202,200), Germany (179,850), Poland (164,100), Italy (161,850), the United Kingdom (141,100), Greece (132,000) and Spain (122,200).
Turkey also has the most army personnel, which make up of the majority of frontline ground troops, with 260,200, France (113,800), Italy (94,000), Greece (93,000), Poland (90,600) the UK (78,800), Spain (70,200) and Germany (60,650), according to the IISS report.
In contrast, there were about 80,000 US troops assigned or deployed to bases in NATO countries as of June 2024, a July 2024 report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says.
Most of those US troops are in Germany (35,000), Italy (12,000) and the UK (10,000), the CRS says.
Some of the larger NATO nations also have weapons equal to or many times better than what Russia has.
Take aircraft carriers for instance. While Russia has a single, antiquated aircraft carrier, the UK alone has two modern carriers capable of launching F-35B stealth fighters. France, Italy and Spain field aircraft carriers or amphibious ships capable of launching fighter jets, according to the Military Balance.
Aside from the US, France and the UK maintain nuclear forces, with both deploying ballistic missile submarines.
The NATO allies besides the US have about 2,000 fighter and ground-attack jets among them, with dozens of new F-35 stealth jets included in that number.
Ground forces include modern tanks, including German Leopards and British Challengers, donated units of which are now serving in the Ukrainian military. European NATO countries can field powerful cruise missiles, like the joint Franco-British SCALP/Storm Shadow , which has also proven itself on the Ukrainian battlefield.
The Military Balance 2025 report notes that Europe is taking steps to improve its military forces without US help. In 2024, six European countries united in a project to develop ground-launched cruise missiles, made moves to increase munitions production capacity and to diversify their supplier base, looking to countries like Brazil, Israel and South Korea as new sources for military hardware.
Analysts say even if the US were to completely pull out of Europe, it would leave important infrastructure behind.
The US has 31 permanent bases in Europe, according to the Congressional Research Service - naval, air, ground and command-and-control facilities that would be available to the countries where they are located if the US were to leave.
And Graefrath notes, that infrastructure would not be lost to Washington if there is regret after a possible US withdrawal.
“It leaves much of the US military infrastructure intact for an extended period (ensuring) that the United States retains the ability to make a military return if Europe were to fail to respond as predicted,” he wrote.
What comes next?
Some hope that the talk of a US withdrawal from NATO is just Trump bluster aimed at pushing allies to cough up and spend more on defense.
They say the world, and another key US alliance, have been here before – during Trump’s first administration, when he reportedly asked the Pentagon to look at options for drawing down US troops stationed in South Korea as protection against nuclear-armed North Korea.
That came as Trump prepared for meetings with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un at which he hoped to persuade Kim to commit to giving up his nuclear arsenal.
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I served with NATO units - they were brothers and sisters in arms as much as the guys and gals fron around the US.
NATO shaped the world
Trump may soon find out that Europe (and NATO) will not be bullied by him
You mean NATO wrecked the world.
NATO went from being a defensive force only to an aggressive entity that flipped former Soviet satellite states as fast as it could; despite verbal promises to Russia they wouldn't. Gorbachev lost power thanks to US/NATO stupidity; and cause an onset of hardline former Soviet style leaders culminating in Putin. Which is why we are in this damn proxy war over Ukraine with Russia wasting billions in US financial and military assets.
Throw in such master pieces of disaster as Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Kosovo/Serbia- and yeah, NATO isn't worth the time or the cost to the US.
Not to mention NATO membership is no longer something to be coveted- with countries that have questionable democracies, fascism, and have been involved in ethnic purge being allowed to join.
As for Trump not being able to bully NATO- screw them, they are nothing w/o the US. NATO countries are the same ones that put tariffs on US goods; and don't even have militaries that can defend their own borders. They also love to bitch about the US not taking care of our own citizens- while we waste billions protecting and defending their sorry asses. It is easy to afford domestic programs when you have a patsy like the US to cover the cost of not having a military.
Ronin
Have you served with NATO troops?
NATO and Europe are much more important to the US than the reverse
That's simply preposterous.
Actually, it is neither "simple" nor preposterous
The U.S. does not exist in a vacuum, Trump is not an oracle of future prosperity and an attitude of isolationism and nationalism is not good for the U.S. economy
That still doesn't make Europe much more important to the US than the reverse.
In the context of maintaining the current world order and not allowing a tyrant (speaking of Putin in this moment) of destroying or encroaching on the democracies of the world.
In that context yes - Europe would now be more important as Trump retreats into isolation
But you claimed Europe is more important to the US than vice versa. That's simply not true, at all. Your point that the US is free to decide that its self interest is better served with a more isolationist policy proves that. The Russian army , a declining second rate power, is not a threat to the US.
As the panic of the last few weeks has shown, a total withdrawal of the US from Europe becomes an existential problem for Europe because even a second rate regional power like Russia is massive threat to a continent lacking adequate defenses. Europe needs allies more than the US does. That's just a fact.
You are looking into a very narrow view of strictly a military sense of importance
I am looking at it from a social standpoint, an economic standpoint and a historial standpoint as well as the obvious military standpoint.
Based on those factors I stand by my assessment
Trump has made it clear and millions of us agree, that the US is no longer the world's police and protector
Geg
There is a huge difference between "police and protector" and "friend and ally"
Right now Trump is being neither - he is trying to bully everyone he encounters unless they bow and scrape and do things exactly his way.
That is not the manner of a leader, but rather the actions of a thug
And you're mad about breaking promises to Russia because they've been so honest and forthright, right?
That is indeed what Putin is desperately trying to convince people of.
RT talking point, okay, go on...
Wow, didn't think the anti-democracy attack on western democracy could get any more direct. At this point I can't tell whether these rightwing conservative defenders of Putin were the ones who got deceived by the flood of Russian lies and sniveling bitch complaints on rightwing media, or whether they're the actual Russian plant disseminating this horse shit Russian narrative. To hear so many who claim to be American defend Russia and Putin is just incredible. I would not have believed it a few years ago, but now I accept that we likely have hundreds of thousands if not millions of open traitors to western democracy and our constitution who would prefer to go live under a murderous dictator because he's murdering the people they hate anyway, so it's all good. They cheer a dictator that is murdering political opponents and committing genocide of the Ukrainian people starting an unprovoked war and then, to top it off, got the dumb shit and chief from the US to try and claim it was Ukraine who started it.[✘]
Trump wastes no time on small talk or irrelevant bs and his style is direct and blunt. It seems to be working because the majority of Americans agree with what he does.
Throw in the masterpieces of disaster like Korea, Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Lebanon, Somalia 1, Haiti, , Congo 2, 20 years of Afghanistan before Biden.
In fact the only exceptional American victories were against the gigantic militaristic island of Grenada and Panama.
The Gulf war was a coalition of US,UN and some Nato nations, The second Gulf war was largely the US and UK.
So maybe the PoTUS that is rat fucking his neighbors and allies isn't worth the time, expense or embarrassment of American politics to NATO anymore.
Bullshit comments cut both ways.
Based on what? Polls? Your news source?
Define defend. Negotiating with Putin is the only rational common sense of dealing with him. We're not at war with Russia and Trump wants to keep that way
Can you refute my comment?
Perhaps not, but Russia is at war with western democracy. Now, that may not sound like something worth defending to a rightwing conservative Christo-fascist, but for at least half of our country, we cherish our freedom, liberty and the ideals of western democracy that our founders envisioned. To me, it's something worth fighting for. But sadly, the other half of the country clearly feels that western democracy has delivered something they would rather abort. It gave freedom, liberty and opportunity to gay, lesbian, transgender, queer, females, minorities, those of any religion or none and empowered them to stand up and be proud of who they are as freedom loving Americans. Unfortunately, some, mostly white rightwing conservative Christians, think that is a bridge too far and now are clearly siding with our old enemy Russia because white nationalist conservative authoritarianism is closer to their ideology than western democracy is, especially when it's used to protect every religion, race and ethnicity, not just their own. They are selfish and don't want to spend any time, money or resources defending anyone else's interests but their own which is exactly what Putin preaches, and rightwing media regurgitates.
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[✘] You are proving who the real traitor to the US is; and if definitely isn't MAGA- or anyone that questions an organization like NATO that has outlived it's usefulness with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
NATO countries would like to thank you for pushing the status quo so they can continue to take advantage of the US.
His style is rude, crude and embarrassing to the nation
He is a bully rather than simply having a direct and blunt manner
Greg
It is up to you support statistics you present not for someone else to disprove
Please do so or remove the comment
Ronin
That is a perfect example of a personal attack, which you complain about
Sure Greg.
Trust in Zelenskyy among Ukrainians rises to 68% amid deterioration of Ukraine-US relations – poll
Half of Americans support Ukraine in war, but only 11% see such support from Trump
How Americans feel about Trump after his first month back in office | PBS News
Support for Ukraine is modestly larger than support for Trump and Trump's support is going down again with all of these attacks on veterans and the VA by him and Musk.
Trump's Ruthless Workforce Cuts Put 200,000 US Disabled and Sick Veterans' Livelihoods in Peril
Trump administration plans to cut 80,000 employees from Veterans Affairs | AP News
Reading your comments I find it difficult to see which you hate more...NATO (which according to you has done so many things-- all terrible!)-- or the "patsy" U.S.!
Link?
From the article
John Lough, a former NATO official who is now an associate fellow at the Chatham House think tank in London, sees an even more profound split in the alliance.
“It simply feels that the United States sees Europe more as a competitor, a rival, than an ally,” Lough told CNN, adding that because of that the commitment for Washington to defend NATO allies is somewhat in doubt.
It’s a fracture that Lough sees as unrepairable.
Trump, forever the victim and conspiracy theorist apparently thinks that Europe deliberately ruined itself in WWII to take advantage of the USA. Trump thinks the EU was formed to ruin our trade "imbalance".
Until China starts shooting, then Trump will be begging for help and it won't be coming from Russia.
NATO countries need to take care of themselves and provide for their own defense.
No more relying on the US to do all of the heavy lifting. Poland and other Ukraine border states weren't screaming for NATO troops after Russia invaded- they were calling on the US to send our forces to defend their borders.
During Trump's first term I heard all about the EU threatening to build their own military and provide their own security. It been over 8 years- where the hell is it? Europe is all talk and bluster. Instead of following through on their "threat" they waited until Brandon took office; and he put things back to normal- which is the NATO tail wagging the US dog.
We need to be concentrating on the real threat to the world China; and using our influence and resources to develop alliances that counteract that threat. NATO was build to offset the Soviet Union block- but that threat ended long ago. NATO is less than useless against China. It is still focused on Russia- who outside of their nuclear capabilities isn't a threat.
NATO is nothing w/o the US; but that shouldn't stop us from leaving.
Surprising to hear that you have no idea what its name means.
So, being a kind person, and often open to helping others, I will tell you the "secret" meaning of the letters:
NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization!
And as I assume you are aware of this (perhaps not?) but China is not a North Atlantic nation! (Don't believe me-- check a map!!!)
So the purpose of NATO is related to the area of the North Atlantic-- not the Pacific. Not The Persian Gulf. Not the Arabian Gulf (which is actually the same thing), not even the Gulf of Mexico (which Trump, (against tremensous odds) courageously renamed "The Gulf of America", LOL!
NATO is nothing w/o the US; but that shouldn't stop us from leaving.
That is utter nonsense
If it is utter nonsense why are the EU and NATO countries panic stricken over the US leaving?
As I stated during Trump's first term the EU threatened to form their own military- so where the hell is it? Why isn't it there securing Poland and other countries bordering Ukraine- why did Brandon have to send in US forces? Poland wasn't screaming for NATO to come protect them.
NATO countries can't even meet their promises to Ukraine; but we are supposed to bail their sorry asses out forever? While they slap tariffs on US goods and take advantage of us?
Screw them all. Time for them to make the hard decisions between guns and butter. They had better damn well hurry; because Trump isn't going to wait around for them to get up to speed this time around. The clock on his administration is already ticking- he needs to act before Democrats destroy everything again.
Again, wrong
The majority of committed support by country has come from the United States, whose total aid commitment is valued at about $128 billion. The U.S. is followed by the United Kingdom and Germany for highest commitments overall. The European Union as a whole has committed approximately $124 billion in aid to Ukraine.
These Countries Have Committed the Most Aid to Ukraine | Best Countries | U.S. News
The figures are all over the place, exaggerated by those who hope to benefit from the exaggerations.
No one can justify Hegseth or Trumps numbers and the Joint Chiefs have been shocked into silence.
This article claims that the US has only supplied a third of the Ukranian assistance to date which totals
$383 Billion and that is in line ( $127B ) with the more commonly used figure from the previous Administration o
of $139 Billion committed but some of which Trump just froze in place.
How much aid has the US given to Ukraine? – Full Fact
Hegseth is not quite as good a liar as his boss, no one believes Hegseth's exaggerations
WTF?
Ronald Reagan (a Republican's Republican) noted
Over the years, NATO has grown from its original twelve members to include Greece, Turkey, the Federal Republic of Germany, and, most recently, Spain. It has demonstrated a capacity to adapt to evolving political and security challenges and to meet the changing needs of its members. The Alliance's commitment to collective security has been sustained through full democratic respect for the sovereign independence of each member.
I am proud to rededicate the United States to the ideals and responsibilities of our Alliance. In May, the United States will host in Washington the spring meeting of NATO foreign ministers. This will be a special opportunity to celebrate the thirty-fifth anniversary of our common enterprise and to consider the future challenges facing the transatlantic partnership. I call upon the Congress and people of the United States to join me in expressing our support for a bond which has served us so well over the years and which will continue to be essential to our welfare in the future.
Proclamation 5158 -- 35th Anniversary of NATO | Ronald Reagan
You think Reagan would support NATO now with all of the former Soviet satellite states- which are not true democracies, embrace corruption, ethic cleansing, and fascism?
The very fact Europe has not problem with Ukraine becoming a member proves it.
Try again.
Time for Europe to put up; and start defending themselves. We have too many leaches- time to pull NATO off. The Middle East can follow.
Ronin
That is nonsense
Yes Reagan would support NATO just as heartily now as he did the day he stood on Berlin and told Mr Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin wall (a couple of years later that happened)
The EU and NATO have rallied around Ukraine since Trump's childish fit in the White House
Do you remember who rallied to the aid of the US after the 9/11 attacks - it was NATO
Yes
Who died and made you the arbiter of what a true democracy is?
It proves that like every other Russian puppet who gets overthrown this century,
the USA aligned with those countries to make them more like us
for the very fact that they were against Putin/Russia/USSR.
Have you forgotten the history of the CIA?
Now where have I heard that lie before?
RT Collaborator Regurgitates False Claim about Ukrainian Neo-Nazis - DisinfoWatch
I was censored earlier for merely factually pointing out that one commenter was repeating RT talking points. I guess now I just have to just link them.
We actually have a MUCH worse problem with supporters of far-right fascist agendas here in America than they do in Ukraine, and those on the far-right all voted for Trump and love Putin because he is exactly what he accused Ukraine of being. The neo-Nazi's here and in Europe love Putin and Trump, they're birds of a feather, and no amount of rightwing media RT lies and obfuscation will erase that fact.
Overruled!
(Calls for Speculation)
Reagan would be cast aside in the current GOPMAGA.
GOPMAGA is GOP in name only. I do not recognize the party.
That is perhaps the truest statement I have seen on NT in years
Even decades!
And also Sweden! (Which had been committed to neutrality for a long, long time!
And also, Finland.
Both are fairly recent new members.
Yes, I think the answer is yes they will survive.
Crazy beyond words that Republicans who were so worried about America's standing in the world during Obama and Biden completely abandon America destroying America's standing in the world to the whims of a tyrant like Trump.
Isolationism doesn't work, the backwards thinking notion that retreating from the world will "save money" is ludicrous.
If other countries cannot or will not buy American goods from American businesses America is not "great again".
If the petulant children infecting the White House have their way it seems they want to make America an isolated country club for a small group of billionaires.
I agree with you
NATO will survive and thrives despite the misguided efforts of Mr. Trump