"Absolutely."
That was Trump's answer when the Telegraph asked if he is considering pulling the United States out of NATO. He called the alliance a "paper tiger." The interview published April 1, 2026, the same day he addressed the nation about Iran, the same day he told Europe to "build up some delayed courage" and take the Strait of Hormuz themselves.
We covered Trump calling NATO "cowards" five days ago, when Iran's drones hit a base with NATO personnel inside and Trump still refused to invoke collective defense. That was contempt. This is different. "Absolutely considering" leaving is a policy position. It means the withdrawal is on the table, being evaluated, and could happen.
Seventy-seven years. That's how long the US has been in NATO. The alliance was built after the last war Europe couldn't stop on its own, ratified under Truman, survived Suez and Vietnam and Iraq and every rupture in between. Trump is telling a British newspaper he's thinking about ending it. During an active war. While Ukraine is fighting a Russian invasion that nine NATO members are directly funding.
What "paper tiger" means
Trump uses "paper tiger" precisely. He used it for NATO in 2019, 2020, during his first term. Then he rejoined, sort of. Now he's using it again — but in a different context. In 2020, the complaint was that NATO members didn't spend enough on defense. The critique was financial. In 2026, the critique is operational. Iran hit something close enough to NATO's sphere that Article 5 was invoked in private discussions. Trump watched his NATO allies decline to join offensive operations in Iran. Then he called the alliance a paper tiger and said he's absolutely considering leaving.
The distinction matters. A financial complaint is fixable — Germany spends more on defense, the problem goes away. An operational complaint about collective will is not fixable with money. If Trump's view is that NATO allies won't fight when America fights, then higher defense budgets don't address the complaint. The alliance isn't broken because it's underfunded. It's broken, in Trump's framing, because it's gutless.
We don't fully agree with that framing. NATO's European members are rebuilding at a pace that would have been inconceivable before February 2022. Rheinmetall's order book is at record highs. The UK and France are already planning to deploy autonomous minesweepers to Hormuz using civilian ships — without US participation — because they understand that operational independence from Washington is now a strategic necessity, not a preference. But Trump isn't watching Rheinmetall's order book. He's watching who showed up to bomb Iran.
Nobody did.
What this does to Ukraine
Ukraine's path to NATO membership was the central diplomatic issue of 2024. It remains unresolved. The promise of eventual NATO membership — and the implicit US security guarantee that comes with it — has been the backstop that kept Zelenskyy in the fight when the frontlines were collapsing.
If the US exits NATO, that backstop disappears. Not gradually. Not after a transition. The moment Trump signs the withdrawal, every Russian calculation about Ukraine's survival changes. Putin has been waiting three years for the US commitment to fracture. He doesn't need to win on the battlefield if the political architecture holding Ukraine together falls apart in Washington.
Zelenskyy already knows this. The fight with Rubio five days ago was partly about this — about Ukraine realizing that American support is not unconditional and not permanent. The Gulf arms deals Zelenskyy signed in Abu Dhabi and Doha (UAE and Qatar) aren't just about hardware. They're about building a supply chain that doesn't run through Washington.
A US NATO exit doesn't kill Ukraine tomorrow. It changes the math. Every European government that has been funding Ukraine on the assumption of US backstop now has to recalculate whether the backstop is real. That recalculation takes three to six months. During those three to six months, Russian procurement accelerates, frontline pressure increases, and the window for Ukrainian gains that opened in February closes.
The Hormuz connection
The timing of this statement is not accidental. Trump is angry at Europe about Hormuz. The UK hosted 35 countries on April 2 to plan Hormuz reopening. Trump's response, on Truth Social the same day: countries like the UK that "can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz" should either buy from the US or "go to the Strait, and just TAKE IT."
He wants European nations to conduct offensive military operations against Iran to protect their own oil supply. They have declined, citing the US-led war already underway and their explicit "we won't be dragged in" positioning (Starmer's words). Trump interprets the refusal as cowardice. The "paper tiger" comment is the direct consequence.
Here's the problem with that logic: Europe isn't refusing to act on Hormuz because of cowardice. France and Britain are building a postwar escort mission right now, with autonomous minesweepers and rechanneled Bay-class ships, designed to reopen the strait after the shooting stops. They're doing this without asking for US help. That's the opposite of a paper tiger. But it's not the offensive operation Trump wants, so it doesn't count.
The alliance has always managed disagreements about when and how to fight. What it hasn't had to manage is a US president publicly declaring the alliance is under consideration for dissolution, in the middle of a war, in an interview with a foreign newspaper.
What the market knows that the news doesn't
Rheinmetall is trading at 78 times earnings. SAAB is up 340% since 2022. BAE Systems has more forward orders than it can manufacture. The European defense market has been pricing in US withdrawal from collective defense for two years. Not because European investors are pessimistic about NATO — because they're rational about Trump.
The market already answered the "what happens if the US leaves NATO" question. The answer is: European defense spending doubles, maybe triples, over ten years. The companies that make what Europe needs — artillery shells, air defense interceptors, submarines, minesweepers — become generational investments. The companies that depend on US procurement contracts become volatile.
What the market has not priced is the transition. The ten years of increased European defense spending are fine in equilibrium. The problem is the gap between today and that equilibrium, when Russian capabilities are fully deployed, Ukraine may or may not have survived, and European militaries are still years away from operating without US logistics support. That gap is where the danger lives.
We assessed in our February piece on Ukraine's structural problems that American attention deficit was the single largest risk to Ukraine's survival. At the time, we were talking about Witkoff getting reassigned to Iran. Now we're talking about whether the United States stays in the military alliance that has underwritten European security since 1949.
That's a different category of problem. And Trump said "absolutely."
What Europe does next
Yvette Cooper's 35-country Hormuz meeting on April 3 was originally about reopening a strait. It now has a second agenda that nobody will state publicly: testing whether European and allied nations can coordinate defense without the United States. Thirty-five countries signing a joint statement about Hormuz freedom of navigation is easy. Thirty-five countries deploying naval assets without US command architecture is much harder.
The UK and France think they can do it. The autonomous drone program, the rechanneled Bay-class ships, the private asset discussions with the Gulf states — that's not posturing. That's procurement. Cooper's NATO counterpart statement ("absolutely considering leaving") arrived before the Hormuz meeting started.
We don't know how the April 3 meeting ends. What we know is that every country in that meeting now has to answer a question that wasn't on the agenda last week: if the US exits NATO before Hormuz is reopened, who provides the security guarantee for the escort mission?
The answer, for now, is France and Britain. They better hope the drones work.
FAQ
Is Trump actually going to leave NATO? We don't know. "Absolutely considering" is a policy position, not an irreversible action. The US has a complex treaty withdrawal process. What we assess is that the probability of US NATO exit is now higher than at any point since 1949, and European governments are right to plan as if it will happen, regardless of whether it does.
What happens to Ukraine if the US leaves NATO? Ukraine is not a NATO member, but the US commitment to European collective defense underpins the political will of the nine NATO members directly funding Ukraine's defense. A US NATO exit changes every calculation those governments are making about long-term support. The immediate effect is ambiguity; the medium-term effect, if the exit happens, is reduced European appetite for open-ended Ukraine funding.
Why is Trump threatening to leave NATO during an active war? The stated reason is that European NATO members declined to join offensive operations against Iran. Trump interprets that as collective defense failing when it mattered. The unstated reason is likely domestic: 35% approval on the Iran war, gas at $4, a national address that didn't end the war. Threatening to leave NATO is a deflection that plays well with the domestic base.
