Getting NATO to Be Able to ‘Fight Tonight’

EXPERT Q&A — Last week’s NATO summit in The Hague was largely seen as a success, with all members (except Spain) agreeing to raise the alliance’s defense spending target to 5% GDP up from 2%. NATO also put on a show of unity and recommitted to collective defense.

The Cipher Brief spoke with Lieutenant General Ben Hodges (Ret.), who served as commanding general, U.S. Army Europe, about what the alliance has to do post-summit to ready defenses for a “fight tonight” posture.

Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the full conversation on The Cipher Brief’s YouTube channel.

The Cipher Brief: We know that President Trump and some of his top national security aides have been deeply, openly skeptical of the NATO alliance, and there have been real questions as a result about American support. I was struck by how effusive, really, President Trump was in his praise of what happened at The Hague and very clear in his commitments. What’s your take on how that all played out?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: I think I’m more relieved than surprised. I’m biased because I’ve been a NATO officer my whole Army life, as all Army officers are part of the Alliance. I recognize its importance for America’s strategic interests. I’m glad that the president did what he did. There was a huge sigh of relief in the Hague that he even showed up. There was some anxiety about that, or that he might blow it up somehow. So the best outcome did happen. He was there. He stayed for the entire thing. He met with President Zelensky. We got an agreement on 5% across the alliance, with one exception, and then a public affirmation of American commitment to the alliance by the president. That’s pretty good.

The Cipher Brief: You’re referring to Article 5 of the NATO charter, which says an attack on any member must be met by all other members. There’s been a kind of rallying cry among some Trump supporters that the idea that American soldiers would fight for Estonia, for example, that’s never gonna happen — that’s not America first. Talk a bit about the significance of that specific commitment, because it seems to put to rest what’s been said before on that front.

Lt. Gen. Hodges: Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, which created NATO, says an armed attack on one shall be considered an armed attack on all. That commitment to collective security has been the glue that held the alliance together. The Soviet Union for decades, now Russia and other adversaries, see this commitment of now 32 nations that if one is attacked, all the other nations would consider it an armed attack on themselves. That was such a powerful part of the deterrence when it’s backed up by real credible capabilities.

For the first time in my life, in his last administration, the president called that into question. I was horrified. That sort of opens a door to a terrible miscalculation by Moscow that maybe the U.S. would not be so committed. Then the Russians could achieve what has always been their dream, which is to break the alliance, to see that members would not respond, and also to continue driving a wedge between Europe and North America. So it was important that the president affirmed it very strongly, clearly and publicly.

Now, some people ask why would we have American soldiers dying for Estonia? It’s an absolutely ridiculous assertion because that is people not understanding why the alliance is so important for us. By the way, this Article 5 has only been invoked once in the almost 80 years of history of NATO, and that was after 9/11, when you had Estonians who came and died because of the United States.

Our economic interests are tied to a very prosperous Europe, so we need Europe to be stable and secure and prosperous because it affects our economy. Secondly, the access that we have in Europe from the UK all the way to Turkey and everywhere in between enables us to project power, not only in Europe, but also into the Middle East and down into Africa.

And of course, even the United States does not have enough capability to do everything that needs to be done to protect all of our interests around the world. We need allies, and all of our best and most reliable allies come from Europe, as well as Canada and Australia.

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The Cipher Brief: Do you think this whole NATO-U.S. rift, whatever one calls it, is that all over behind us?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: NATO, the most successful and longest alliance in the history of the world, has 32 nations now. There are going to be huge disputes between nations all the time. France kicked NATO out back during the time of de Gaulle. They left the military structure of NATO for several decades, but came back. The U.S. had huge debates with the UK and France after the Suez crisis. Turkey and Greece have been almost at war throughout. So, there are always challenges inside any sort of a coalition or alliance for all kinds of obvious reasons.

The thing that kept us together was always American leadership and the commitment of several nations to say, look, this is too important for us to lose this collective security because of some argument over an economic thing or past grievance. And there’s a reason that there are nations still in a queue wanting to join NATO, because they know that their security is so much better if they’re part of this alliance.

The Cipher Brief: The core takeaway seems to be this pledge that all the members except for Spain have made to spend 5% of their GDP on military or military-related stuff. How big a deal is this?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: It’s an expectation. It’s a commitment that everybody achieves this 5% threshold for investment in defense: 3.5% for traditional, what we would consider defense investments, equipment, training, ammunition, personnel; and then 1.5% for infrastructure, rail, ports, cyber protection, all the things necessary to be able to move alliance capabilities around.

Obviously these things will be exploited in some countries. That would not shock me. But the key was that nations are going to invest in infrastructure, which is badly needed, and the cyber protection of this transportation infrastructure. But also, 3.5 % of GDP, that’s almost double for every country from what it was 10 years ago. The United States is not even at 3.5 right now, by the way. So this is going to be a real increase.

Having said all that—and I do believe in the importance of a metric like that—the most important thing, of course, is capability. Do we have the actual capability to do what we’re supposed to do? That’s what will deter the Russians, not a sign on the board that says, hey, we’re 3.5. It’s real capability: units that are properly trained, fully manned and have lots of ammunition, aircraft that fly, ships that sail. That’s got to be the focus. So I’m glad we got this done, but now we’ve got to make sure that we turn that money into real capability.

The Cipher Brief: Do you mean how they spend it?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: That is a part of it. Where does it go? Germany has a lot of money out there, but the processes are still several years behind. So they’ve got to fix things internally to take all these euros and turn them into combat formations and capability. They’ve got the right leadership now to do that in Chancellor Merz.

But also, I think it’s important that we emphasize the importance of readiness to be able to fight tonight. This is a mindset thing. It’s not just about buying new planes and equipment and hundreds of thousands of drones. Are you ready to actually deploy on very short notice and fight tonight? Can you get there and do you have what you need? To me, that has got to be job one for every secretary of defense, ministers of defense— readiness.

The Cipher Brief: On that “fight tonight” point, it is worth noting that these pledges are to be met by 2035. That’s 10 years from now. And obviously, some of the stuff we’re talking about takes a long time to manufacture and get out to the battlefield. How concerned are you about that time frame?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: It took us 10 years to get where we are now from Wales. A lot of nations are now spending more than they have since the end of the Cold War. So, of course, I don’t like it. We should already be there, including the United States. But I think what we’ll see is different leaders, including the American president, continue to track every year. You can’t do what they call a hockey stick, where you stay where you are for eight years and then expect that you’ll get credit for jacking it up at the end. So there’s going to be continued pressure.

But honestly I don’t think too many nations are going to need that pressure. What we’re seeing in Germany and in the UK, Finland all the way down to Romania. They’re not confused about who the enemy is — it’s Russia. These countries were already moving well beyond 3.5% before this summit. So, I think we’re on the right arc and right direction in most places, just not all.

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The Cipher Brief: For the last several years, for obvious reasons, the war against Ukraine has been front and center at these summits. It suddenly seemed a little bit on the back burner. What are your thoughts on how Ukraine comes out of this summit?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: This is my biggest disappointment from this summit. Ukraine was exactly, what you said, put on a back burner. I’m glad that President Zelensky showed up, that he was invited and that he attended. I’m glad that President Trump met with President Zelensky for about 45 minutes or so. While the president did not reveal a lot of the details, he was more positive about Ukraine than I’d heard from him in quite some time.

Now, to be candid, the president changes his mind all the time but I hope that this signals that he is more willing and open to helping Ukraine as most of our European allies are. I had hoped that this summit would be another affirmation by the Alliance that we’re going to do everything we can to help Ukraine. The organizers shortened it in hopes of making sure that President Trump would stay for the whole thing. And so Ukraine was kind of taken out of the agenda.

Nonetheless, what’s most important is that there seems to have been a positive meeting there. And most of our European allies are even more committed to helping Ukraine defeat Russia.

The Cipher Brief: You’ve made the point that Russia is incredibly weakened militarily right now with casualties, the economy, and so forth. And it doesn’t seem, in that sense, to be much of a threat. Of course, everything we’re talking about and what they were talking about at the summit is all about the Russia threat. So how should we understand the nature of that threat given how weak the country is today?

Lt. Gen. Hodges: This is a great question. Russia, I was certain, would not have made it this long. Given the casualties that they have suffered, the effects of some sanctions on them, and now it looks like they’ve probably lost Iran as an ally or a source of drones. But China has picked up some of the slack. North Korea continues to provide ammunition. And Russia right now has transitioned to a wartime economy because of course they don’t have to worry too much about whether or not the peasants are unhappy that they can’t get a new refrigerator. Putin does not have to respond to this sort of thing the way any other democratic leader would have to respond. So he’s putting a lot of resources into this.

That would be over if we could figure out how to stop Russia from exporting oil to China and India. But as long as they can keep doing that, and as long as oil prices stay up, then Russia can keep doing what they’re doing for quite some time. At the recent economic forum that Russia hosts each year, President Putin sort of downplayed the economic situation challenges they have. But his own people publicly were saying that they’re almost in recession, that they are in fact in trouble.

What I am sure of is that if Ukraine capitulates or fails, or if we turn our back on Ukraine and Russia is able to take a couple of years to rebuild and fix what is broken, they will be knocking on the door of Moldova and probably of Latvia. Their objective is to break the alliance, to show NATO that nations are not really willing to fight against Russia over a piece of Estonia or Latvia. That would be their terrible miscalculation. So to make sure that the Russians never make that terrible miscalculation, we have to get back to where we were in the Cold War days of spending what’s necessary, being prepared so that you can have another 40-50 years of no war with Russia.

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