The Absurdity of American Sabotage: Trump, NATO, and a Nation Held Hostage

How one man’s recklessness is mistaken for a country’s will

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

The United States is not withdrawing from reality. It is being dragged there by one man, and the rest of the world is being told—incorrectly—that this man speaks for 330 million people.

He does not.

What we are witnessing right now is not “America versus NATO,” nor is it some grand democratic pivot toward isolationism. It is the spectacle of a single political actor, Donald Trump, behaving as if alliances are personal grudges, treaties are negotiable favors, and global stability is a branding exercise. The tragedy is not just that this behavior is reckless. It is that foreign governments are being forced to plan as if it represents the settled will of the United States.

It does not.

Polling over the last decade has been remarkably consistent on one point: a solid majority of Americans support NATO and collective defense. Even when partisan splits widen, support for the alliance remains above water, especially when framed in terms of preventing war in Europe rather than fighting one. Americans understand, at a gut level, that alliances exist to stop catastrophes before they start. They remember—however dimly—what happens when deterrence fails.

Trump’s posture toward NATO is not rooted in popular demand. It is rooted in grievance, ignorance, and transactional thinking. He treats Article 5 as a protection racket rather than a mutual guarantee. He frames alliances as scams instead of force multipliers. He speaks as though the United States were a lonely mercenary rather than the architect of the postwar order it still benefits from.

This is where the situation turns from embarrassing to dangerous.

When the president of the United States publicly questions whether he would honor treaty obligations, the damage is immediate—even if nothing formally changes. Deterrence depends on credibility, and credibility depends on predictability. Trump injects chaos where stability is required. Allies are forced to hedge, reinforce, and sometimes act without Washington, not because they want to weaken NATO, but because they no longer trust American follow-through under a volatile leader.

And then there is Russia.

Moscow does not need NATO to collapse. It only needs NATO to doubt itself. Every statement Trump makes that undermines alliance unity, every flirtation with abandoning commitments, every suggestion that democratic allies are freeloaders rather than partners, advances Russian strategic goals at zero cost to the Kremlin. This is not subtle. It is not speculative. It is textbook asymmetric warfare: encourage internal division, amplify distrust, and let the target corrode from within.

The most surreal aspect of this moment is that the greatest military alliance in modern history is being destabilized not by an external enemy, but by the internal political dysfunction of its most powerful member. The United States cannot effectively police its own elections, cannot insulate its institutions from disinformation, and cannot prevent a single individual from leveraging the presidency as a wrecking ball against decades of strategic architecture.

Yet even now, it is a mistake—a catastrophic mistake—to conclude that NATO itself is the problem.

NATO is doing what alliances are supposed to do: adapt, reinforce, and plan for worst-case scenarios. European members increasing defense spending, coordinating more closely, and preparing for contingencies that once seemed unthinkable are not signs of collapse. They are signs of learning. The alliance is being stress-tested by American instability, and so far, it is holding.

What must not happen is this: confusing Trump’s behavior with American intent.

The majority of Americans did not vote to dismantle alliances. They did not consent to acting as a spoiler for authoritarian regimes. They did not authorize the United States to become the weak link in global security. They are, instead, trapped in a system where electoral outcomes can be distorted, accountability delayed, and long-term damage inflicted by short-term chaos.

This situation is absurd, yes—but it is also clarifying.

It exposes the difference between a country and a man. Between institutions and impulses. Between alliances built over generations and egos cultivated over decades. NATO should not dissolve itself because the United States is temporarily unreliable. It should do the harder, smarter thing: endure, adapt, and outlast the noise.

History is unforgiving to alliances that panic. It is kinder to those that survive the idiots and remain standing when sanity returns.

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References (APA)

North Atlantic Treaty Organization. (1949). The North Atlantic Treaty. https://www.nato.int

Pew Research Center. (2023). Americans’ views of NATO and U.S. commitments to allies. https://www.pewresearch.org

Reuters. (2024). Trump questions NATO commitments as allies weigh contingencies. https://www.reuters.com

U.S. Department of Defense. (2022). National Defense Strategy of the United States of America. https://www.defense.gov