Readers may be surprised to hear this, but NATO is doing fine. It was fine last year despite U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s rebuke of most European leaders at the Munich Security Conference. It remained fine after President Donald Trump repeatedly declared that Canada should become the 51st state. It was still fine after it seemed that Trump was going to fully abandon Ukraine for Russia. And, yes, even after Trump made pointed and repeated threats to take control of Greenland—the trans-Atlantic alliance is fine.
To be certain, none of those things were good. They created drama for no apparent reason. And yes, the European members of NATO are now spending more on defense than they have in decades, and Trump’s criticism of their low defense spending played a role in that. But a more important driver of that decision was Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, followed by its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
While the European allies are taking on more of the burden of direct assistance to Ukraine in line with Trump’s demands, Ukraine is also becoming its own security provider, with an army larger than any of the European NATO powers and anti-drone expertise that nations elsewhere, notably in the Persian Gulf, are drawing upon.