Only one day after President Donald Trump had left France and returned to the White House, his Secretary of War (Congress approval for the change in name pending) met with his colleagues in NATO’s headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
I am quite sure everyone has experienced, when in an employment, what may be called a dressing-down by his/her boss. Every employee of course tries to avoid this but it seems to be inevitable in any career. You either leave, are fired, or improve your performance.
A wise boss will offer you opportunities to save face (as long as the misdemeanor isn’t too grave and he/she rather wants to get rid of you). The scolding is generally be done behind closed doors. It is considered confidential.
As for NATO and the various defense secretaries of past US administrations, I am quite certain that relevant meetings took place both as a matter of routine and in response to international crises—for instance, when Article 5 of the NATO Treaty was invoked after September 11, 2001, or when Vladimir Putin’s Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, and in 2022 when Russia launched a full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine.
Certainly, these meetings were behind closed doors and their sensitive decisions were classified.
What Pete Hegseth did in Brussels was outrageously different. I have asked GeminiAI for an English expression for German, Einen Einlauf verpassen and was informed, To read someone the riot act may be fitting best.
It aligns, by the way, with J.D. Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference in 2025 and Marco Rubio’s at the same venue in 2026. But publishing this verbal attack on his NATO colleagues on the White House website is a particularly egregious blunder. It is harmful, dangerous. Possibly treason.
When Hegseth does now maunder about NATO 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 — trying to provide a sense of history of the last 80 years—he confuses opportunities (the Fall of the Sowjet Empire and, what Francis Fukuyama called, The End of History) and backlashes (the rise of Islamic terrorism which culminated in 9/11 and the decades-long wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. The so-called, by Trump, forever wars).
The former has indeed made it necessary for European leaders to re-consider its relationship with Russia, which possibly led to a fatal trivialisation of former KGB foreign intelligence officer, Vladimir Putin, who emerged as Russia’s new dictator since 2000. The latter, at least immediately after 9/11, was heavily supported by all NATO-members after the United States under President George W. Bush invoked for the first and only time Article 5. And, they led to unseen migrations of fugitives which European nations since then attempt to fend off, in accordance with the rule of law.
In particular Hegseth’s drivel is utterly brazen when he states,
No longer focused on defending Europe. NATO 2.0 drifted toward out-of-area operations and things that had nothing to do with war fighting at all. Instead of tanks and fighters and air defenses, the focus had been on gender equity and climate change and defense austerity. Europe’s borders flew wide open, welfare states expanded, defense budgets cratered, along with Europe’s belief in itself and its civilization. NATO lost its way. NATO 2.0 was an era of distraction, deindustrialization, and demilitarization. It was an era of free riding and those were lost years that we’re not going back to.
He seems to have forgotten that he addresses elected Ministers of Defense, i.e. former colleagues, who have long realized that the U.S. is on its way out of NATO with a new focus on “their” hemisphere and an alleged new adversary, China.
Of course, European allies could not support Trump’s, Hegseth’s (and Netanyahu’s) unprovoked war on Iran. As more details of peace negotiations with Iran reveal, the war did not yield the desired results so far. Hegseth complains,
As President Trump put it, and rightfully so, he gave our allies attest to support America when we asked for their help, and too many failed it. The United States has defended Europe for generations, and the President all he said was that our jets would need to take off from bases in Europe or our ships from ports to strike targets in the Middle East, Iranian targets that threaten European interests even more directly than they threaten us, but too many of our allies said no, or tried to drown us in arcane legal debates, or criticized us publicly for doing what they aren’t prepared or able to do themselves. It was shameful.
Shameful? When G.W. Bush asked Germany in 2002 for support in his Iraq War, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, now disgraced for his unwavering support for Putin, replied, solidarity—yes, adventures—no. Weapons of mass destruction, the casus belli, were never found.
Hegseth continues,
These allies, they put America’s sons and daughters, our sons and daughters, at risk by denying them the predictable access facing an overflight that never should have been in question at all. In some cases, we had to shift capabilities from one country to another out of NATO allied countries altogether. There’s no excuse for that, and that’s not to mention the fact that some countries have yet to show a credible path to meeting their Hague commitments. Too much talk, some of NATO’s largest economies, some of the richest countries, allies that are happiest to go on about the rules-based international order and middle powers banding together, still seem to think the era of free riding is here. Eisenhower and Trump disagree. This isn’t what the president or America expects from this alliance. This is not what any reasonable person would expect, and it’s not going to cut it anymore.
When European leaders grow spines it must be lauded. Of course, supporting the U.S. in possibly illegal, under International Law, wars is illegal itself. Unfortunately, individuals like the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz or the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave ambiguous signals. Merz, for example, lauded Israel and his Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last year (for Operation Midnight Hammer) when claiming, They are doing the dirty work.
In contrast to former President G.W. Bush in his Iraq war, Trump never involved the American public, Congress or European allies in his decision for war with Iran. It was his fault, what does he expect in particular from the Europeans?
There is a dilemma here. While European allies and Canada have long understood that NATO is history (as French President Emmanuel Macron assessed years ago, NATO is braindead) and that the Americans want to leave, Hegseth apparently wants to keep emasculated subordinates in the treaty who, to make matters worse, cannot rely on any support once, for example, Putin’s Russia will attack in the near future.
I have another suggestion. Given the utter chaos Hegseth and his boss have wreaked in the Middle East, we Europeans ought to be glad if they credibly assured us—say, in a memorandum of understanding—that they would do nothing for us.
Europe has two nuclear powers at its disposal whose protective umbrella ought to be expanded and consolidated.
We must also be prepared to wage the new battle for Greenland—and not just through a 44-hour excursion. A NATO without the USA. Bring Canada into the EU. Show more visionary courage.
19 June 2026 @ 11:19 UTC+2.
Last modified June 19, 2026.