Yuri Grips / EPA
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and US President Donald Trump, in the Oval Office of the White House
From NATO’s popularity among Americans to the need for allies in a possible conflict with China, there are several reasons that make a possible departure from the United States a risky decision for Trump.
President Donald Trump met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on April 8 for what Rutte described as a “conversation.”very frank and very open” According to reports, the two discussed the US-Israel war against Iran, which, according to White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, Trump believes NATO was “tested and failed”.
Later, the president published on his Truth Social platform that “NATO WAS NOT THERE WHEN WE NEEDED ITAND WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED IT AGAIN.”
The American president’s meeting with Rutte took place a week after he told the Reuters news agency that he was “absolutely” willing, after American allies agreed refused to participate in the US-Israel campaign against Iran. But this is very unlikely for three reasons.
First, in 2023, Congress enacted a law prohibiting the president from “suspending, terminating, denouncing, or withdrawing the United States from the North Atlantic Treaty” — which established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) — without the assent of the Senate or an act of Congress. This is extremely unlikely to be changed before the midterm elections in November and impossible later if Democrats end up controlling the House of Representatives.
The second reason is that participation in NATO is popular among Americans. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2025 showed that 66% of respondents in the US believed that the United States benefited from membership in NATO, while 32% thought the opposite. Although, as on many things, the US is divided — with more Democratic voters (77%) supporting NATO membership than Republican voters (45%) — it is clear that, on the whole, Americans approve of NATO membership.
The third reason is that leaving NATO would significantly weaken the US military. More than half a century of research by historians and international relations experts has concluded that leaving NATO would also significantly weaken the United States.
In 1989, historian Paul Kennedy’s detailed study of wars over a period of 500 years, “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”, found that a decisive characteristic for success in a war are the resources that the parties involved in the conflict are able to mobilize. Kennedy cites the examples of the two world wars and demonstrates that one of the main reasons for Germany’s defeat was the ability of the Allies to mobilize much more resources in terms of manpower, weapons production and economic assets than Germany and its allies. This proved decisive in both conflicts.
Research into quantifying the military capacity of nations has been carried out for more than half a century within the scope of the “Correlatos da Guerra” project, founded in 1963 by the North-American political scientist J. David Singer. The project aims to systematically collect data on the causes and consequences of wars.
One of the data sets collected in the project is the Composite National Capability Index. This index combines data on the demographic, industrial, economic and military capabilities of nations, including the US and China. The higher the index score, the more resources a country has to wage wars.
The graph shows the magnitude of the index for the main countries in the database. THE China is the most powerful nation on the chartwith an index score of 23. The USA comes in a distant second, with a score of 13.
In addition to the US, there are five NATO nations on the chart: Germany, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, France and Italy. The total score for all six NATO members is 20 – much closer to China’s total score.
The graph does not include the scores of the remaining NATO members, but when added to the total, the NATO score is much higher of China’s score. Therefore, the assumption that the US can wage war against China alone is dubious.
How article 5 works
Article 5 of the NATO Charter stipulates that an armed attack against a Member State is considered an attack against everyonetriggering collective defense by all Member States. A recent report from the US Naval War College concluded that: “A broad and growing body of evidence suggests that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is preparing credible capabilities to invade Taiwan.” The report argues that China will utilize an extensive deception strategy to confuse their opponents when war is started, with quick action by their armed forces to create a fait accompli. It is observed that this type of lightning attack is usually successful.
If this occurs, and considering that the US has military advisors in Taiwan and military resources in the region that would need to be neutralized in the first phase of the war, if the invasion is successful, it would trigger Article 5 of the NATO Charter. In this case, the China would find itself at war with 32 NATO countries – not to mention Far Eastern countries, such as Japan, Indonesia and Vietnam, which have serious concerns about Chinese aggression, but are not members of the alliance.
Therefore, regardless of the U.S. president’s ambivalence toward NATO, the fact is that without his support, the U.S. could face a humiliating defeat with China in a future confrontation over Taiwan. The United States is much stronger as part of NATO – and Trump’s advisers should strongly reinforce this message.
