There is something oddly satisfying about how European leaders are so angry at Trump that they…are doing what he has been asking them to all along.
Trump is magic.
— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) May 14, 2025
One of the biggest criticisms of Trump, and one with a surface level of plausibility, is that he is a bull in a China shop more inclined to bully people than sit down and reason with them to get the best solution to a problem.
I say “surface plausibility” because, well, I, too, would like it if Trump could give our allies a call and calmly explain why doing something would be beneficial and have them hash out the details in a civil manner.
There’s only one problem: that doesn’t work, especially when our allies are perfectly happy with the situation as it is.
Every president since Clinton has urged our European allies to step up and take more responsibility for their own defense. After the fall of the Soviet Union, all Western countries cashed in on the “peace dividend,” but Europeans saw not a dividend but a bonanza. They let their militaries rot so much that a trading bloc with three times the population and ten times the economic might of Russia now fear that Russia could steamroll its way to the Atlantic Ocean should it so choose.
Obama famously wanted to make a pivot to the Pacific, where the majority of the world’s commerce flows and where tensions have been ratcheting up for two decades. He, too, urged Europeans to get up off their butts and decrease their reliance on the US to defend them.
They thumbed their noses at him. To give you an idea of how unserious some countries in Europe are about defense, Spain includes its NetZero expenditures to increase “green energy” as defense expenditures. Keir Starmer’s proposal to put a peacekeeping force in Ukraine after a cease-fire has stalled because the combined might of Europe can’t muster even 10,000 troops for the effort, let alone the 60,000 first proposed.
To put that in perspective, the United States bases 84,000 troops in NATO countries.
Trump ratcheted his rhetoric about NATO in his first term, and Europeans still laughed at him. They have been so sure about their ability to jawbone the US into defending the continent as they insult America to our face that they continued to let their militaries atrophy.
Not now. Suddenly, every country has discovered that they can’t bully the US, and the only reason that is true is that Trump decided to quit jawboning and start bullying them.
Europeans are hopping mad at Trump’s bullying, and the members of the transnational elite here at home are as well. Why can’t Trump ask more nicely? Why is Trump a Putin puppet?
Yeah, well, the answer to the first question is obvious: he did, and they laughed in our faces. The answer to the second is, “he’s not. He just isn’t Europe’s puppet either.”
The absurdity of the European whining about being afraid of Putin is only hidden behind the propaganda push that claims Europe couldn’t possibly defend itself. To the extent that this is true, it is a choice, not a reality written in stone. The better question is, “Why does Europe, 80 years after the end of World War II, and 35 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, still depend on the US for everything?”
I happen to like the idea of a Western alliance to defend a liberal, free trade order in the world. I even like the idea of the US being the largest contributor to that alliance–he who pays the piper gets to choose the tune.
But over the past few decades we have been played for suckers. And if it took Trump’s kicking the 30-year-old slackers out of the basement to force them to get a job, then so be it.
For Merz, following through on the promise to build Europe’s largest conventional army won’t be easy. Gen. Carsten Breuer, Germany’s top military commander, told an audience at the German Council on Foreign Relations in April that Germany needs 100,000 additional troops “as quickly as possible.”
Yet, despite intensified recruitment efforts, troop levels have flatlined at around 182,000 as many young people in Germany shun military service.
Look at that number. Germany’s entire military is only double the size of the Americans deployed to NATO. And despite all the talk about fearing Russian aggression, Germany’s military readiness has DECLINED since Russia invaded Ukraine. No doubt because Biden didn’t press anybody to increase their readiness.
“Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we had eight brigades at around 65% readiness,” Colonel Andre Wuestner, head of the German Armed Forces Association, told Reuters in an interview. Sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, as well as accelerating Germany’s own drills, took a toll on the available equipment, he said.
“Together, this means the German land forces are down to a readiness of around 50%,” he said.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised after Russia’s invasion to overhaul Germany’s decrepit military, but three years later a pledge to provide the NATO alliance with two divisions – typically around 40,000 troops – by 2025 and 2027 faces major setbacks, more than a dozen military officials, lawmakers and defence experts said.
This decline in readiness has been a choice, and one that Biden obviously encouraged by promising a blank check. Nothing short of closing the checkbook could force our “allies” to step up and meet their commitments.
Germany, alongside Poland, is tasked by NATO with providing the bulk of ground forces that would act as first responders to any Russian attack on the alliance’s eastern flank.
Scholz’s historic pledge to bring about a Zeitenwende, or turning point, in Germany’s approach to its military has not worked, the sources said, blaming a lack of a sense of urgency, a dysfunctional procurement system and strained finances.
Berlin has failed to fully equip troops for a division for NATO by the start of this year, and in any case has no air defences to support them, the sources said.
Its pledge for a NATO division by 2027 is “long out of our reach,” said a military source.
That second division is only about 20% equipped, according to opposition lawmaker Ingo Gaedechens, a defence expert on parliament’s budget committee.
So every time you hear somebody whine that Trump is abandoning NATO, tell them this: our allies abandoned NATO, failing to meet their obligations. The US exceeds ours, and it is about time others step up, or else it isn’t an alliance.
We’ll have to see if Germany and our other allies really do quit kicking and screaming and start behaving like responsible adults, but if not, don’t blame Trump. Just as when he warned Germany not to rely on Russia for gas and they laughed at him, Trump has a habit of being right.
