NATO matters more than ever to America’s role in the world

Donald Trump said in the presidential debate last month that without his pressure on European allies to increase defense spending, NATO risked “going out of business." Mr. Trump’s critics, including many Europeans, say they worry the alliance might unravel if he returns to the White House.

NATO’s primary purpose—“to keep the Soviet Union out," as its first secretary general Lord Hastings Ismay put it—is as important as ever. For pro-American Eastern Europeans, distrustful of their complacent peers in Germany, France or Spain, Ismay’s second imperative—to keep “the Americans in"—is a matter of survival.

In a report for the American Enterprise Institute, Giselle Donnelly, Iulia Joja and I argue that American leadership in NATO isn’t an act of charity. Peace and security in Europe have always been vital to U.S. interests. Our nation fought two world wars on European soil precisely because we saw domination of Eurasia by our adversaries as unacceptable.

As for Berlin and others not paying their fair share, remember that according to Ismay, NATO’s third purpose was to “keep the Germans down." The enduring fecklessness of Germany’s political elites is a testament to NATO’s success in solving what in the 1950s loomed large as the “German question."

Nobody is likely to ask the U.S. to come to the defense of Germany. If a future president Trump decided to tell Chancellor Olaf Scholz that his country had been expelled from the alliance—if that were possible—the geopolitical consequences wouldn’t be catastrophic.

Countries that do need defending, from Finland in the north to Romania in the south, remain committed to the alliance and to their security, spending well above the target 2% of gross domestic product on defense. Many members, including Lithuania and the Czech Republic, share Washington’s concerns about China and the Indo-Pacific.

To stay relevant, NATO must strengthen its deterrent posture on the Eastern flank, which it can do at little cost to the U.S. Poland and the Baltic states should be brought into the alliance’s nuclear-sharing system and Polish F-35 jets should be certified to carry nuclear missiles.

The war in Ukraine is an important test. A Ukrainian defeat would make NATO’s job much harder and much more expensive, placing Russian forces on Poland’s, Slovakia’s, Hungary’s, and Romania’s doorstep and setting in motion a refugee wave without parallel in modern history. The solution isn’t simply to spend more on military assistance to Ukraine. NATO also should remove the myriad restrictions—such as denying important long-range systems to Kyiv and prohibiting targeting Russia’s hinterlands—that force Ukraine to fight the war with one hand tied behind its back. People on both sides of the Atlantic want to see peace. However, the only path to a durable peace lies in securing Ukraine’s future through NATO membership as soon as the war is finished.

This must be part of a wider strategy of rolling back Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, made all the more important by the threat of Iran and the rise of China. China is integral to the threat to U.S. power in Asia and the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. Beijing is investing heavily in Iran’s petrochemical industry, helping bankroll a regime that sponsors Houthi rebels along with terrorist organizations that threaten Israel.

In Georgia, another country that will need NATO membership sooner or later to deter Russia, China just acquired a deep-sea port in Anaklia that will give Beijing a new path to European markets. That is what happens when Washington leaves a friendly country in geopolitical limbo.

Both Mr. Biden’s lethargy and Mr. Trump’s transactional attitude toward NATO are inadequate responses to the challenge that America is facing in the form of a coordinated coalition of revisionists in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran. Business as usual is a recipe for catastrophe, as is the temptation to assess alliances primarily on their ledgers.

The tasks of pushing against Russia in Eastern Europe, Iran in the Middle East and China globally are all connected. Washington can’t succeed if it tries to deal with them in isolation. NATO and the trans-Atlantic relationship are central to America’s role as the world’s leading superpower. It would be a tragedy for Americans if the incumbent or his Republican challenger squandered this asset.

Mr. Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.