We’ve seen a lot of things in American politics that make you wonder if the people running the world are actually serious. But this one might be the crown jewel. NATO — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the seventy-seven-year-old military alliance that’s supposed to be the backbone of Western defense — is reportedly considering canceling its own annual summits because alliance leaders are too scared of what happens when Donald Trump walks into the room. Read that again. They’d literally rather not meet than deal with Trump across the table.
Let me make sure I have this straight. These are the people we’re trusting to stare down Vladimir Putin, manage the Chinese threat, and keep Europe from turning into a theme park for authoritarian dictators — and they can’t handle a meeting with the President of the United States because he might say something that makes them uncomfortable? Incredible. Truly. Someone get these guys a participation trophy and a weighted blanket.
According to reports published Tuesday, NATO officials are floating the idea of nixing the traditional annual leader summits because they’re worried Trump’s presence and dominance will — and I’m quoting here — “overshadow the proceedings.” Translation: Trump shows up, says what everyone’s thinking, demands these freeloading nations actually pay their bills, and the European delegation spends the rest of the week writing passive-aggressive communiqués about how their feelings got hurt. So instead of fixing the problem, their solution is to just… not have the meeting. Genius.
This is the ultimate power move, and Trump didn’t even have to do anything. He didn’t threaten to leave the alliance. He didn’t stage a walkout. He didn’t send a mean tweet. He just exists, and the mere prospect of him being in the room is enough to make a nuclear-armed military alliance consider hiding in the supply closet. The man lives rent-free in the heads of every bureaucrat from Brussels to Berlin, and the rent is apparently so high they want to shut the whole building down.
Remember when they told us Trump was going to destroy NATO? Every cable news anchor, every think tank wonk, every retired general with a book deal — they all said the same thing. “Trump is undermining the alliance. Trump is Putin’s puppet. Trump is the greatest threat to transatlantic security since the Berlin Wall.” And now, six years later, NATO’s still here. It’s bigger than ever, actually — Finland and Sweden joined. But the alliance leaders are so rattled by one man’s personality that they want to cancel their flagship event. If that’s what “destroying NATO” looks like, then maybe NATO needed a little destruction.
Let’s be honest about what’s really going on here. The summits aren’t the problem. The problem is that Trump forces a conversation that European leaders desperately don’t want to have: why are American taxpayers still footing the bill for the defense of countries that spend their military budgets on solar panels and four-day work weeks? The two percent GDP defense spending target has been the bare minimum standard for over a decade, and most NATO members still don’t meet it. Trump shows up, points at the spreadsheet, and asks why Germany is spending less on defense than it spends on subsidizing artisanal bread, and suddenly he’s the bad guy.
The European defense establishment has been coasting on American generosity since 1949. They’ve built welfare states the size of continents, let their militaries rot, and expected Uncle Sam to keep the wolves at bay — all while lecturing us about healthcare and gun control at cocktail parties. Trump is the first president in modern history to say, out loud, in public, with cameras rolling, that the arrangement is garbage. And they hate him for it. Not because he’s wrong. Because he’s right, and being right in front of cameras is unforgivable in diplomacy.
So now the proposal is to replace annual summits with smaller, less visible meetings where Trump can’t dominate the room. Think about what that says. The most powerful military alliance on Earth wants to restructure itself — not to better counter Russia, not to address the China threat, not to modernize its command structure — but to minimize the influence of its most powerful member’s leader. They’re not redesigning NATO for security. They’re redesigning it for comfort.
And what message does this send to the actual adversaries? Putin’s watching. Xi’s watching. Every tin-pot dictator with a satellite dish is watching. And what they’re seeing is an alliance so fragile that one loud American can send it scrambling to change its meeting schedule. If you were sitting in the Kremlin right now, would you be intimidated by this organization? Or would you be pouring yourself another vodka and laughing?
Here’s the thing Trump understood before any of them did: respect isn’t given at summits. It’s earned with strength. You earn it by paying your bills, building your armies, and showing the world you’re serious. You don’t earn it by hosting cocktail receptions in Brussels and posing for group photos where everyone pretends to like each other. Trump turned those photo ops into accountability sessions, and the freeloaders can’t stand it.
Cancel the summits. Don’t cancel the summits. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that a single American president, through nothing more than the force of his personality and a willingness to say what’s true, has exposed the entire transatlantic defense establishment as a club of diplomats playing soldier. They’d rather hide from Trump than answer his questions. And those questions — who’s paying, who’s fighting, and who’s just along for the ride — aren’t going away just because you cancel the meeting.
They’re supposed to defend Europe. They can’t even defend their own schedule.