I joined Elise Labott on a Substack Live this morning as the NATO Summit in Ankara was concluding. Check out the entire conversation
I’ll have more to say about the summit itself in my next Politico Europe column (out tomorrow). Short version: a nothing burger, boring by design. After years of drama, that was the point.
The real story is what’s being forged underneath the boredom: a more European NATO.
You can see it already. The three joint force commands — in the Netherlands, Italy, and the US — are now led by European four-stars. Europeans are talking seriously about their own nuclear contribution, working through France and the UK. A non-American SACEUR isn’t totally unthinkable anymore. None of this was true a decade ago.
The engine driving all this isn’t Trump’s tariff threats or his musings about pulling troops. It’s something simpler and more durable: trust has been broken. Europeans have concluded they can no longer afford to depend on the United States the way they have always done. So they’re building the capacity not to.
That is a good thing.
What would not be a good thing is Washington concluding that a more capable Europe is Washington’s exit ramp. It isn’t.
For 75 years, Washington asked Europe to do more. Now Europe is doing more — not just spending more, but taking on responsibility. Real burden sharing was always going to require power sharing. What we’re finally seeing is exactly that, and it will make the alliance stronger.
What would not be a good thing is Washington concluding that a more capable Europe is Washington’s exit ramp. It isn’t. A Europe that isn’t secure has twice dragged America into wars we didn’t want. NATO exists because we learned that lesson the hard way. President Trump doesn’t believe it. I do. That’s the fault line under everything else.
The right endpoint isn’t an American withdrawal, precipitous or gradual. It’s a NATO where Europe leads more, decides more, and pays more — with America as an indispensable partner rather than the sole driver. Our security is still indivisible from theirs.
Europe is finally growing up. The tragedy would be if America chose that moment to walk out of the room.
