EXPERT INTERVIEWS — While the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has long counted the United States among its most generous and loyal members, many NATO nations were deeply concerned about the prospects of a second Trump administration. During his first term, and then again as a candidate for reelection, Trump had criticized the alliance for not doing enough to shore up its own defenses, and on more than one occasion threatened to pull the U.S. out of NATO entirely. Experts in the U.S. and in Europe are divided on whether the threats were reckless examples of American isolationism, or pragmatic ways of pressuring NATO’s European members to do more, and lean less heavily on Washington.
Either way, in the first week of the Trump administration, these issues have come to the fore. Speaking virtually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday, Trump called for NATO members to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP, saying this “is what it should have been years ago.” He harkened back to his first administration when he demanded alliance members reach the 2% target: “I insisted that they pay, and they did, because the United States was really paying the difference at that time and it was unfair to the United States.”
The Cipher Brief spoke with two American experts with deep experience in matters pertaining to NATO: Ian Brzezinski, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy, and Alexander Vershbow, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia. They spoke with our Senior international correspondent Ia Meurmishvili for a recent episode of The World Deciphered.
Their conversations have been edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: What do you think of the idea of NATO allies boosting defense spending to 5% of GDP?
Brzezinski: I think it's actually a sound recommendation. We face a much more volatile and dangerous world. That's one of the realities [we are] unfortunately inheriting from the Biden administration. We have a high-intensity war in Ukraine that's unresolved; we have the spreading of violence across the Middle East; we have increasing Chinese predatory conduct and aggression in the Indo-Pacific, not to mention a plethora of other threats. So we do need to spend more.
During World War II, we spent roughly 37% of GDP to defeat the Axis [powers]. During the Korean War, it was 14% of GDP. During the Vietnam War, it was 9%, and one can make the case that it was a less complex, less volatile context then, even [though] we had the Cold War. So 2% today is not going to cut it, and 5% to me sounds like a very reasonable figure if we're really going to, as an alliance, develop a deterrent posture, and the defense capabilities necessary to protect and promote our interests.
We’re no longer talking about one theater. We're talking about three theaters that are now interconnected and on the cusp of metastasizing into something that could be a really global conflagration. We're not prepared.
The transatlantic community has a GDP of $54 trillion. So we have the wealth. This is a world where there have to be sacrifices made, and I would argue that that sacrifice is worth it to prevent what could be a devastating, catastrophic set of conflagrations. It'd be far cheaper to spend that 5% now than to pay the human and financial costs of a broader war.
Amb. Vershbow: I would say it's very ambitious. It's not that it wouldn't be justified in terms of the gaps within the alliance and the gap between what the Europeans spend on defense and what the United States spends on defense, but there's probably an element of bargaining in [Trump’s] selection of 5%. I would be very happy if we ended up somewhere in the 3-4% range. And as I have said before, it's necessary. We're dealing with a much more dangerous security situation than during Trump's first term. Our adversaries are now more united and more capable militarily, as well as with all kinds of other subversive activities. So spending more is going to be absolutely essential. I hope that that's what he chooses to focus on rather than terminating NATO, which would be bad for everybody.
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The Cipher Brief: What do you think is going to happen under President Trump to the Ramstein Group, which has coordinated Western aid for Ukraine?
Amb. Vershbow: The Ramstein group, officially known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, has been an extremely effective mechanism in coordinating military assistance to Ukraine, to include both equipment training and intelligence sharing, and I expect that it will continue to function in some similar way. It’s been a good example of transatlantic partnership, with the U.S. Secretary of Defense chairing these meetings. I think NATO is already anticipating that there might be somewhat reduced engagement or participation by the U.S., and they already began to revamp some of the institutional mechanisms that will allow the Ramstein Group to continue to be effective, with maybe more burden sharing with Europeans and other non-native countries. I think that's going to be a success story that they will build on. There may be some other changes, but the important thing, of course, is the policy behind it, which is to help Ukraine build up the capacity to defeat the Russians in the short term, and to deter any future Russian aggression after this war is over, so that there's no repeat of what happened in 2022.
Brzezinski: My initial gut is that the Trump administration will be happy to have the Europeans lead it, which I think would be a mistake because without American leadership you lose a lot of that momentum. You lose a lot of the pressure that's necessary to get the Europeans to continue providing the level of assistance they've had and that, as necessary, to increase those levels of assistance. Leadership counts and American leadership counts, and when we're not there, the situation is likely to be worse.
The Cipher Brief: What is the role of NATO in ending the war in Ukraine?
Brzezinski: This is a tragic war. It's a war that's cost over a million combatant casualties, both Russian and Ukrainian. It's displaced millions of people. It's destroying a democracy in the heart of Europe – that's Ukraine. And we have an interest in bringing this war to a swift and just end and in a way that ensures enduring stability, at least military stability, on a continent that probably is going to have to face long-term confrontation with Russia.
If we want to achieve those objectives, the most effective way to do that is through NATO, with NATO playing a leadership role in the support of Ukraine and the securing of Ukraine. For me, the most effective way to do that is to extend NATO membership to Ukraine, including its Article Five security guarantee. Under the current circumstance, that would involve some sort of deterrent force that would deploy to Ukraine to, at a minimum, secure the territory or help Ukraine secure the territory it currently controls. That is the most effective way to bring this war to an end – and then also it's a foundation for military stability in the aftermath. It would have to involve the United States, because a deterrent force without the United States will lack the credibility and probably the capacity necessary to be truly an effective deterrent to Russian aggression and a defense against any kind Russian provocation or attack.
Amb. Vershbow: There have to be important decisions taken by the Trump administration on what kinds of policies and activities they want to continue, and where they may take a different approach. I certainly hope they don't follow the lead of some of the MAGA Republicans who would just as soon stop supporting Ukraine and pressure them into a bad deal, which would be extremely shortsighted and would end up probably costing the U.S. and the allies much more to repair the damage and rebuild the defenses in Ukraine that might've been lost. So we're all waiting with bated breath to see what the Trump Administration's course of action will be. But I think what's needed is to give the Ukrainians not just enough to hold off the Russians or to avoid losing, but to really achieve a much more decisive edge on the battlefield. And then there may be more favorable conditions to generate leverage before you sit down at the bargaining table. The way to do that is not just to keep Ukraine afloat, but to give them more decisive capabilities to turn the tide on the battlefield. Then Putin will have to face the fact that he's not winning, that the longer this drags out, the worse it's going to be and the more costly it's going to be for Russia, and then we may be able to get to a ceasefire that will last.
Any ceasefire, of course, has to be enforced. Every agreement the Russians ever signed with Ukraine since independence, Russia has violated and abandoned, so we can't repeat that mistake. There's been some talk about some kind of peacekeeping force that could separate the sides and provide the environment for implementing the ceasefire. That would have to be a very robust force.
Brzezinski: How Trump manages this conflict, how he brings it to its next phase—hopefully one which is an end of the fighting on just and stable terms—will define the credibility of his “peace through strength” strategy. If he does what he has said he would do during the campaign, that would be [British Prime Minister Neville] Chamberlain-like concessions that would strip Ukraine of its sovereignty and security and probably lead to a wider war. Trump doesn't want that, but he still has to be convinced.
I would say there are three arguments and actions that the Europeans need to make to Trump: One is to leverage his fear of a wider war that would suck in U.S. involvement. That's the one thing Trump fears. He doesn't want to have on his watch another war, another endless war that drags in American troops.
He’s coming in, sitting before a world that, as we have talked about, has three major contingencies: Hot war in Ukraine; spreading violence in the Middle East; and increasing Chinese provocation and aggression. They are all interlinked. They are at risk of metastasizing into a global war of really catastrophic proportions. Ending the war on Ukraine on stable and just terms is the most effective way to prevent that escalation.
Second point would be that if he wants his “peace through strength” national security strategy to have credibility, it's going to be defined by what he does on Ukraine. If he makes concessions to the Russians that are extreme, that are strategically unstable, that reward aggression, peace through strength will be associated less with Churchill and more with Chamberlain. He doesn't want that. We don't want that.
And the third thing is an action item and it falls on the Europeans, and there's actually some legitimacy to it. They need to stand up now and say that they are willing to put together a deterrent force. I don't know if it's 50,000, 75,000 personnel, but a sufficient force that would be willing to go in and deploy into Ukraine to provide that deterrent capacity. The request they would make to Trump is that they would want some American dimension in that; they would propose that it would be 80-90% European with an American dimension, probably command and control arrangement or capacities like a headquarters, maybe some air assets and missile defense assets that we already have in Europe. That would be the kind of burden sharing that Trump would expect. That's the kind of action that could help bring this war to an appropriate end. And that is something that Trump, I think would find appealing because it would end the war, it would validate his peace through strength strategy, and it would demonstrate that he has led the Europeans to carry their share of the burden that he's been demanding for so long.
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