When Donald Trump berated NATO’s European member countries for what he said was their failure to contribute their fair shares to the alliance, and threatened to pull the U.S. out completely, he may inadvertently have done them a huge favor. Because what he did was jump-start a review of their respective defense capabilities vis-a-vis any possible threat from nearby Russia.

What the leaders of those European nations understand, but Trump refuses to acknowledge, is that such a threat is very real. Vladimir Putin has no intention of ending his expansionist plans with Ukraine. And while the world is occupied with conflicts in the Middle East, Putin is not sitting idly by.

According to a report published by the German news magazine Spiegel, citing a new strategy paper from the Bundeswehr, the German military considers Russia an “existential risk,” not only to Germany, but to the whole of Europe. The confidential document warns that “the Kremlin is aligning both its industrial and leadership structures ‘specifically to meet the requirements for a large-scale conflict against NATO by the end of this decade.’” [Reuters, June 20, 2025.]

The report further cites the strategy paper as saying that Russia is preparing for such a conflict by strengthening its forces in western Russia “at the borders with NATO,” and that they could have around 1.5 million soldiers on active duty as early as next year. [Id.]

Unlike the United States, Europe remembers all too clearly the years of living under Soviet occupation following World War II, and the way any revolt was met with brutal military force (most notably in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968). And those nations that were once republics of the Soviet Union itself — Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, and ten others — have known independence for little more than three decades . . . and most do not intend to surrender to Putin’s vision of a new union.

When Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently agreed with Donald Trump to increase Germany’s NATO defense spending target to five percent of GDP, he wasn’t submitting to Trump’s demands. He was being smart, and listening to what his military intelligence was telling him.

And we need to do the same. Pulling out of NATO at this point in time is probably the worst thing we could do, both for our European allies and for ourselves. In the modern world, isolationism simply cannot work to protect us.

We need our allies as much as they need us.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
6/22/25