European allies are ramping up defense spending to 5 percent of GDP - with 3.5 percent going to hard military capabilities - driven not by President Trump's demands but by a deepening crisis of confidence in American reliability. H.R. McMaster, former national security advisor in the first Trump administration, said the surge is "based on some doubts about U.S. reliability and an associated erosion of trust."
Speaking on the World Class podcast at Stanford University alongside former Biden-era national security advisor Jake Sullivan, McMaster described subregional blocs forming within NATO - Nordic and Baltic states clustering with Poland into tighter defense groupings. As "Hvylya" reports, the discussion laid bare a shared concern: even two advisors from opposing administrations agree the alliance faces structural strain.
McMaster pushed back on the idea that any European power could fill a U.S. leadership vacuum. "Who is going to lead Europe without the United States? France? I don't think so, man," he said. "Who is going to sign up for another European country leading Europe? Nobody will at this moment." Yet he acknowledged that the "perception of weakness is provocative to our adversaries" - making mixed signals from Washington actively dangerous.
Host Colin Kahl raised a deeper structural worry: allies now trust the United States only in "four-to-eight-year increments based on who is in power." McMaster conceded that retrenchment sentiment cuts across both American parties. Many taxpayers ask why they underwrite defense for a continent that accounts for "about 19 percent of the world's GDP and 50 percent of the world's social spending."
But McMaster argued the case for engagement must be made bluntly. "What is necessary is for American leadership to explain to the American people how problems that develop abroad can only be dealt with at an exorbitant cost once they reach our shores - and how much cheaper it is to prevent a war than to have to fight one," he said. He pointed to 80 years of alliances preventing great power conflict as evidence the investment pays off.
McMaster said he remains an optimist. Europe could end up spending far more on defense and taking greater responsibility - "and then rebuilding that bridge of trust. It could be the best of both worlds." But he urged the president to recognize that weakness - whether in alliance cohesion or domestic partisan discord - "provokes our adversaries and could transform them into enemies and lead to war."
Also read: "There Is No Such Place as Europe": Friedman Dismantles the Core Illusion of European Security.