Donald Trump Will Exact His Revenge on European NATO Partners

If Donald Trump wins the U.S. presidential election, Europeans will feel the difference. It will no longer be a matter of spending a few more billions on their defense. And this has particular implications for Germany.

Let’s begin with a prediction: Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. Then, let’s follow that up with the question on the mind of every head of state and government assembled at this week’s NATO summit in Washington: What does it mean for the alliance if its founding and leading nation is governed by a man who has the utmost contempt for the organization and its members in Europe? Let’s go in search of some answers.

As Henry Kissinger is no longer with us, we’re obliged to consult a few other sage oracles and experts at explaining international affairs. Luckily, some engaging thinkers are active in this particular field of study, and their wisdom can be distilled into a single theory. Let’s call it the “Swift-Dylan Theory of Trans-Atlantic Relations under a Trump 2.0 Presidency.”

This theory is partly based on the young American Taylor Swift’s work, much of which is concerned with the phenomenon of revenge. A key line from one of her compositions, which also aptly captures the prevailing mood and recurring theme that will motivate Trump in a second term in office, goes like this: “There is nothing I do better than revenge.”

There Must Be a Fundamental and Enduring Shift in Burden Sharing

When applied to the relationship between a Trump-led America and European NATO countries, it means that things will become what managers call “challenging.” During his term [in office], Trump did not manage to effect a substantive shift in NATO burden sharing. America is still paying for Europe’s security, as it has done for nigh on 80 years. In his second term, Trump will want to exact his revenge for this failure. He is going to demand something radical, conditioned on the threat of pulling the plug, that is an ultimatum to pull out of NATO. If the alliance is to survive as a trans-Atlantic security organization, and the United States is to remain actively engaged in European security policy — something which concerns Europeans rather more than Americans — burden sharing will require a fundamental and enduring overhaul.

It is doubtful that this can be achieved by virtue of Europe increasing its defense expenditure by a few tens of billions of euros, or that it will help much if a certain number of NATO countries reach the 2% spending target at some point, or because Germany starts investing 2.19% of its gross domestic product in defense, instead of 1.61%. Will Trump suddenly stop thinking of Europeans as a bunch of freeloaders letting American taxpayers guarantee and fund their freedom and prosperity? Good luck if you think that’s going to happen.

Europeans Must Take Responsibility for the Conventional Defense of Their Continent

Increased European defense budgets are certainly a temporary solution. Ultimately, the only burden-sharing option that Trump could buy into, insofar as it is clear, clean and credible, would be the following: European NATO member-states taking on responsibility for the conventional defense and security of their continent. After all, my dear Europa, it’s your continent, not the Americans’. This means Europeans procuring all the tanks, fighter jets, air defense systems and artillery shells for themselves, as well as providing all the military troops needed to deter, and in the worst case, defend themselves against the Russian aggressor. In such a scenario, the U.S. serves only as a sort of defender of last resort in continuing to extend a protective nuclear umbrella over its NATO allies in Europe.

Dividing up responsibility for European security in this way along conventional and nuclear lines, will be extremely expensive for Europeans with their low resource levels of weapons and military personnel. And who should foot most of the bill for this? That’s to say, who is in any kind of position to bear the costs, if not continental Europe’s largest and strongest economy, Germany?

Germany Will Have To Co-finance Other Countries’ Security

This brings us to the second part of the Swift-Dylan theory. The American social scientist, Robert — usually known as Bob — Dylan, has turned his lyrical talent to many a topic, and not just a “rolling stone” and “feeding pigeons on a limb.” The refrain, “How does it feel . . . ?” which he sang in 1965, and which could be paraphrased as, “How do you like being in my shoes?” is considered one of his greatest.

Under a Trump 2.0 presidency, this sonorous leitmotif will resonate a great deal in Berlin, because Germany will find itself having to step into the role that the U.S. has played in NATO for the last 75 years — of being the nation that co-funds the security of other countries that are only too pleased to outsource their defense to an external party, and by being the country given to grumbling about the other ones not spending enough despite their repeated pledges at NATO summits, and the one pressuring others time and again to increase their defense spending, only to have to listen to constant excuses.

Indeed, both German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and German Secretary of State for Defense Boris Pistorius have already freely expressed their annoyance at the meager level of some European countries’ military aid for Ukraine. It is likely no coincidence that such complaints have a certain familiar ring to them, as though Trump were muttering about those tight-fisted parasitic NATO partners in Europe. OK, maybe in slightly more polite terms. Perhaps a new Scholz-Pistorius-Trump theory on redistributing costs within international defense and security partnerships has begun to emerge.