I was enjoying a remarkably crisp Sunday cortado on the terrace of my country club when my phone began to buzz with the news. A major oil refinery in Moscow was ablaze. Ukrainian drones had bypassed Russian air defenses, striking deep into the capital and forcing multiple commercial airports to suspend all flights for safety reasons. As I watched the thick plumes of black smoke billow across my screen, I did not feel fear. I felt a profound, overriding sense of fiscal relief. Finally, I thought, Europe is learning to pull its own weight.
For far too long, the American taxpayer has been the exhausted parent of a continent full of geopolitical basement dwellers. We have subsidized their defense, guaranteed their shipping lanes, and allowed them to spend their own money on frivolous luxuries like universal healthcare and reliable public transit. But as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth so astutely pointed out this week, the era of unconditional transatlantic love is coming to a close.
I had the immense pleasure of sitting next to Secretary Hegseth at a recent gala celebrating the deregulation of private military contractors, and I was deeply impressed by his vision. He explained his new, comprehensive review of our NATO allies with the kind of refreshing, blunt clarity you rarely hear outside of a corporate restructuring meeting. Hegseth noted that this review will not just be a simple box-ticking exercise. Some countries, he warned, will fail, while others will pass with flying colours.
It is about time we started treating the most critical military alliance in human history like a third-grade spelling test. If a nation cannot demonstrate the sheer hustle required to independently bomb a Russian energy facility on a Sunday morning, why should they get a passing grade on their American-funded report card? We are finally putting NATO on a Performance Improvement Plan, and the results speak for themselves.
Hegseth has made it explicitly clear that NATO is moving fast and irreversibly toward a model of Europe leading. This means our allies must step up to take primary responsibility for the defense of the continent. Frankly, the blazing infrastructure currently lighting up the Moscow skyline is the best possible proof of concept. If Ukraine can execute a deep-strike drone campaign that completely disrupts the Russian aviation sector on a fraction of the budget of the Pentagon, surely President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Keir Starmer can figure out how to handle the ensuing apocalyptic fallout without constantly asking us for an advance on their allowance.
The real danger of continuing to fund NATO at current levels is that we deprive European nations of the character-building experience of fighting a desperate, under-resourced land war on their own soil.
The Secretary is entirely right to point out that where other allies do not spend with urgency, our dues and contributions will go down. It is a simple concept that Hegseth correctly describes as a two-way street. I am intimately familiar with two-way streets, having successfully petitioned my local city council to convert the road leading to my summer home into one, purely to double the amount of available parking. The principle is the exact same. On one side of the street, America dramatically reduces its financial commitments and shifts its military posture away from the region. On the other side of the street, Europe absorbs the full brunt of whatever happens next. It is the very definition of a balanced partnership.
Just last month, while enjoying a spectacular branzino at a chalet in Gstaad, I found myself in a spirited debate with a high-ranking European diplomat. He attempted to argue that the United States had a moral obligation to maintain its force posture in the region, citing some outdated notions about collective security and the post-war liberal order. I simply smiled, ordered another bottle of sparkling water, and told him that true friendship means knowing when to walk away from the dinner table and let someone else pick up the check.
Critics, of course, will argue that abandoning our allies during the largest European conflict since the Second World War is somehow irresponsible. I find this sort of concern-trolling deeply unimaginative. When I look at the suspended flights and the blazing fuel silos in Moscow, I do not see a crisis. I see a continent that is finally ready to leave the nest, mostly because we have set the nest on fire and stopped paying the rent.
We should applaud the administration for its tough love. As I told the Secretary over dessert, true leadership sometimes means looking your closest allies in the eye and telling them that if they fail the review, they are completely on their own. I, for one, look forward to watching Europe pass with flying colours, utterly unburdened by American funding.