Trump roils NATO as pressure builds over Strait of Hormuz

The Trump administration’s mounting frustration with NATO allies over their refusal to join the Iran war has policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic bracing for change.

President Trump would need congressional approval to officially withdraw from the international military alliance, but there are other steps he can take to curb cooperation, and Europeans say his threats alone are badly weakening NATO.

In a sign of the growing concerns over Trump’s threats, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is heading to Washington next week.

While experts and former officials don’t see the U.S. leaving NATO tomorrow, Trump’s disparaging rhetoric and threats to abandon it are hitting hard across the Atlantic.

“The real question isn’t whether the U.S. leaves NATO, it’s whether the allies continue to trust the U.S. to lead,” said David Cattler, a senior fellow with the Center for European Policy Analysis. “Alliances don’t break when countries leave, they break when that trust erodes.”

Tensions between Washington and its European allies this week appeared to come to a head when President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the commander in chief was considering pulling the U.S. from the military alliance because of its fellow countries’ resistance ‌to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump has long been critical of NATO — often over how much countries contribute to their collective defense compared with the U.S. — but this week he appeared to make his strongest rebuke yet when he told The Telegraph on Wednesday that Washington’s membership was “beyond reconsideration.”

Trump told allies during a prime-time address later in the day to either buy oil from the U.S. or get it from the Strait of Hormuz themselves.

Rubio parroted Trump’s comments, telling Fox News on Tuesday that the U.S. will reexamine its relationship with the alliance once the war in Iran has ended.

And U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker told Newsmax on Wednesday that Trump is “reevaluating” U.S. membership.

A U.S. exit would mark a seismic shift in a world order that’s been in place since the alliance was created in 1949. The U.S. is one of the 12 founding members of NATO, which has grown to its current number of 32 — 30 European countries, the U.S. and Canada.

The U.S. currently accounts for around 60 percent of alliance defense spending, with Canada and Europe contributing $574 billion to the more than $1.4 trillion total in 2025. Trump has repeatedly demanded that NATO countries significantly increase defense expenditures and maintains that allies should eventually assume primary responsibility for defending the European continent.

Outside of that constant prodding, the alliance has been rocked since the start of Trump’s second term over everything from tariffs, lethal aid for Ukraine and his insistence that Denmark turn over control of the semiautonomous island of Greenland to the U.S.

“It’s like Groundhog Day really,” one European diplomat told The Hill about the threats over Iran. “The reasons can be different — defense spending, Greenland, Strait of Hormuz or something else — but the threats keep on returning.”

The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the country should treat a U.S. withdrawal from NATO “as a possible scenario and take it seriously.”

“Of course, NATO is the cornerstone of our security. Of course, we want to be a good, loyal ally of the United States, but we cannot pretend that the U.S. President isn’t saying what he is saying,” the ministry said in a post to social platform X.

Another European diplomat said that the alliance needs to reckon with Trump’s threats, even if it’s hard to fathom the president completely withdrawing the U.S. from the organization.

“No going back to the old days,” they told The Hill, adding that the best response is to build up Europe’s ability to carry the bulk of NATO operations without Washington.

Cattler said he believes allies are less concerned right now about a formal U.S. withdrawal than they are about the unpredictability of NATO’s most important member.

Trump can’t officially withdraw the U.S. from the nearly 80-year-old organization thanks to a law passed by Congress in 2023, which was sponsored by Rubio, who was then a senator, but the president can take other steps to pull the U.S. back from the alliance.

One option would be to pull out or greatly diminish the footprint of the 70,000 U.S. troops in Europe, as Trump sought to do in his first term when he ordered a reduction of American forces in Germany by roughly 10,000 people. The plan, which Trump said was due to Berlin’s failure to meet NATO spending goals, was ultimately slow-walked until the president left office in early 2021 and then abandoned.

Another choice would be to reduce the U.S. personnel assigned to NATO and fewer military exercises between Washington and its allies, or to even declare that the U.S. won’t honor Article 5, a cornerstone of the alliance that states that an armed attack against one member is considered an attack against all.

“Trump can erode NATO’s relevance,” Jennifer Kavanagh, a senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, told The Hill. “Stop sending people to NATO meetings, slowly pull institutional people out of NATO, remove some enabling capabilities, stop communicating with allies. … It can basically make NATO practically irrelevant, even if it still exists.”

A U.S. withdrawal from NATO would be hugely unpopular with Democrats and many Republicans in Congress. While Democrats have lambasted the administration’s recent disparaging comments, the GOP response has been a mixed bag — split between isolationist MAGA voices; war hawks who have traditionally supported the alliance but now are taking a disparaging view, such as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.); and conservatives including Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who this week spoke out in defense of the alliance.

McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader, on Wednesday released a joint statement with Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), saying, “Americans are safer when Nato is strong and united.”

“Nato troops fought and died in Afghanistan and Iraq alongside American forces,” they said. “The United States must not take this sacrifice – nor our allies’ commitment to make it again – lightly.”

Tillis also said Trump’s contemplation of a NATO withdrawal is fulfilling the “greatest dreams” of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, while “undermining America’s own national security interests.”

Destroying the alliance would offer few benefits to the United States, according to Cattler, who said a constant American presence in Europe allows it easier access to the front lines of a potential conflict.

And even as Trump has voiced an unhappiness with the lack of support he’s getting from Europe in Iran, he still is relying on the continent’s airspace and bases to fight the war, Kavanagh said.

“He is still entangled in NATO and has to limit how far he pulls back so long as he continues to need those bases to fight,” she said.

Laura Kelly contributed reporting

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