European arrogance treats NATO as a one-way partnership

President Donald Trump recently announced that he was reducing the US military presence in Germany by at least 5,000 troops, with plans to “cut way down” the 70,000 active-duty military personnel in Europe.

The move came after Western European nations brusquely rejected Trump’s request for help in securing the Strait of Hormuz when the Iranian regime threatened it.

Both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told the media that the US conflict with Iran wasn’t “our war.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz added that the United States, which has demolished much of Iran’s military capabilities and economy, was being “humiliated” by the clerics.

NATO was conceived as an intergovernmental military alliance meant to thwart Soviet ambitions.

It now has 30 member countries, all of them reliant on the United States for their defense.

Need it be said that if the United States hadn’t taken responsibility for the protection of Western Europe after World War II, the continent would have likely descended into yet another bloodbath — as had been the case every few decades stretching back centuries.

Instead, we allowed its humiliated nations to focus on building world-class economies.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States propped up the alliance both militarily and financially.

And virtually the entire time, we’ve been engaged in a one-way relationship.

Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, for instance, only nine NATO nations even bothered meeting the organization’s military spending criteria: the US, as always, and Greece, Estonia, Britain, Romania, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

Not exactly the all-star team.

Seven NATO nations spent a larger percentage of their GDP on defense than Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Germany has increased its military spending to meet the promised NATO threshold — but even now, while the US spends up to 14% of its budget on defense, Germany spends 2.4%.

Despite all this, European nations exhibit a haughty detachment from American interests, demanding help but rarely offering any.

When “Arab Spring” rebellions broke out across the Middle East, France and Britain pressured Washington into intervening in the Libyan civil war.

We helped.

Was that “our war?” No.

The North African nation is now a transit hub for Islamic refugees heading into Europe.

How about the Serbian conflict in the 1990s, when NATO carved out a Muslim-majority nation of Kosovo in the middle of Europe.

Was that “our war?” Hardly.

Whatever you may think of the value of those military interventions, neither was conducted under the stated mission of the alliance.

A moral responsibility to stop unfolding humanitarian disasters was the rationale.

Well, the Iranian regime, which funds and operates destabilizing extremist groups within Europe, has created numerous humanitarian disasters by funding and arming Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and extremists in Yemen and Sudan.

Not to mention the slaughter of tens of thousands of its own innocent civilians.

As far as we know, Trump never asked the Germans or other European nations to participate in the military phase of the conflict.

So why not assist in efforts to keep the Strait of Hormuz open?

After reducing Russian oil and gas imports and shutting down its own successful nuclear energy program, Europe relies on it far more heavily than the US does.

Not only has NATO been unhelpful, it’s also been actively undermining the American mission.

Spain, France and Italy have all restricted American military presence in airspace or ports during the war against the regime.

Why? Political reality.

Prompted by Germany, the European Union opened its borders to millions of new Islamic refugees in the years following 9/11.

There are around 50 million Muslims on the continent now, nearly 10% of the population in countries like France, Germany and Sweden.

Appeasing that highly volatile population is surely one of the reasons these nations are reluctant to help the United States now.

And it’s highly unlikely that Britain’s hapless prime minister, Keir Starmer, or Spain’s Marxist PM Pedro Sanchez would ever send anyone to fight alongside US forces anywhere else in the Islamic world.

NATO’s defenders will note that the alliance offers us better global reach, gives us forward operating bases and builds important relationships.

True. Still, right now the relationship is far more beneficial for Europe.

The US can build relationships and bases elsewhere in the world — with nations that will do the minimum to defend Western civilization.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. X: @davidharsanyi