The NATO summit ended in Brussels last Thursday, as US President Donald Trump strongly condemned Germany and other allies. This has not only grabbed headlines all over the world, but also triggered worries about whether the United States, which has withdrawn from numerous frameworks, might also leave NATO.

Trump has pushed NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 2 percent of their GDP by January 2019, and threaten to leave the group, the Reuters reported.

We should have the full awareness that as the US and NATO are critically important to each other, no matter how dreadful Trump's rhetoric is, the possibility of US quitting from NATO is little.

The reason Trump had confrontations with the rest at this summit was primarily due to his dissatisfaction with the huge military expenses paid by the US. He wanted all NATO countries to fulfill their commitment on defense expenditure of 2 percent of their GDP, and eventually reach 4 percent.

NATO members reached a consensus in 2014 that defense spending of each country will increase to 2 percent of GDP by 2024. But currently, apart from the US, only Greece, the United Kingdom and Estonia have reached this guideline.

Trump complained bitterly as the US contributed 71.7 percent of total military spending of NATO in 2017. Trump appealed that the EU must act as soon as possible, especially Germany, to rapidly increase their spending.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted at the press conference after the summit that the NATO leaders held an emergency meeting on defense spending, and all allies have agreed to redouble their efforts to make NATO stronger.

After the meeting, Trump said that all countries agreed to increase their spending by at least $33 billion together. Although other member states pledged to invest more heavily in order to achieve the goal of 2 percent before 2024, there was no direct comment or reply from other allies to Trump’s statements.

The US did not leave NATO this time, and it is less likely to do so in the future. However, can other countries meet the payment standard on time? Will Trump’s aggressiveness and extreme protectionism exacerbate the dissatisfaction of European allies and the internal disagreement in NATO? The situation may not be optimistic.

Defenseless against the pressure from the US, a few countries will possibly increase their defense expenditure. The share of the US may be decreased, but the decrease won’t be large as other countries might not spend much more money.

For NATO's European member states, although the debt crisis has improved currently, while decades after the World War II, the Europeans took the peaceful life for granted. At the same time, due to the flourishing of populism, they think that it is not necessary to spend too much money on defense, believing terrorism and immigration issues can be solved by money. They expect the European Union but not NATO to solve the security problem resorting to culture, cooperation and multilateralism.

All these, are not the same as what the US thought on military security. The United States now believes that allies must share more responsibilities by contributing more money.

In all, there are 22 of the NATO member states and EU member states are overlapping, so a group of countries are willing to spend money on the EU for anti-terrorism and border security maintenance, instead of using it on NATO or paying the bill twice. There are even some countries complaining that their money has been used by the US to provoke wars.

Additionally, the aversion of European countries towards the US is on the rise, with growing disagreement appearing between the two sides on numerous international issues, which made it even harder for the US and other NATO countries to reach agreement.

Within this year, the US first withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement and restarted sanctions against Iran. The European parties are committed to support the content of the agreement and their company to continue to cooperate with Iran.

In recent months, the US imposed trade sanctions on European countries, which widely triggered dissatisfaction among its allies. According to the US media, the French government said that Europe will be united against the trade policy of Trump and said that the (trade) war was provoked.

What’ more, in the absence of any loosening of sanctions against Russia from Europe, Trump’s friendly attitude toward Putin on their recent meeting has also touched the most sensitive nerves of its allies.

Although Trump said at the summit that NATO is more helpful to other allies than to the US, the real benefits that NATO endowed the United States can by no means be ignored. For the US, the value of being the leading country in NATO cannot be measured by money.

At present, the US does not fully realize that it is irrational and cost-ineffective to keep blasting to its allies for protecting its own interests.

NATO has given the US abilities and opportunities to extend its military influence to the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

The assistance and support in the international warfare is also precious. In the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was the European allies that sent troops to help the US, although the wars are not initiated by them.

I don’t think the US is ignorant of how the situation will be, if it lost the influence and supports from NATO. And in term of the European countries, the US is still the biggest bill payer in NATO. The US is somehow an additional security guarantee that no one wants to lose. Therefore, although the recent negotiation is bitter, the US and NATO will not be separated.

Wang Yiwei is Jean Monnet Chair Professor, Directer of Center For EU Studies, Renmin University of China. The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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