WASHINGTON, DC – Mitch McConnell does not often use Senate floor time to correct his own party. On Wednesday, however, the Kentucky Republican and longest-serving Senate party leader in US history, made clear that on NATO and America’s role in the world, he believes the debate has gone badly off course.
The question facing the world’s most successful military alliance, he argued, is no longer whether Europeans take collective defense seriously. It is whether the United States still does.
Speaking as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McConnell delivered a history-heavy, data-driven warning aimed as much at the White House as at a restless American public: US credibility – not European resolve – is now the alliance’s most fragile component.
From burden-sharing to burden of leadership
For decades, NATO skeptics have trained their fire on Europe’s underinvestment in defense.
McConnell acknowledged the charge – and noted that he has made it himself for years. But he argued that the old critique no longer fits today’s facts.
Poland is set to spend nearly 5 percent of its GDP on defense. The Baltic states are matching or exceeding that level.
Finland and Sweden are racing toward NATO targets years ahead of schedule.
Germany, long the alliance’s most conspicuous laggard, has amended its constitution to allow deficit spending for defense.
“In other words,” McConnell suggested, “Europe’s long holiday from history is over.”
What has not changed, he warned, is Washington’s own complacency. US defense budgets have flattened, failed to keep pace with inflation, and left industrial capacity idle even as wars rage in Ukraine and the Middle East.
The irony, McConnell implied, is hard to miss: Just as allies are stepping up, America appears to be stepping back.
Cold war lessons Washington is forgetting
McConnell grounded his argument in a familiar but pointed retelling of postwar history.
After World War II, Americans understood that European instability meant American insecurity. That insight produced the Marshall Plan, NATO, and Article 5 – commitments that endured despite domestic opposition and isolationist pressure.
Polling from the late 1940s and early Cold War, McConnell noted, showed Americans repeatedly willing to clear a high bar: a promise to come to another nation’s defense if attacked. That commitment, he argued, was never cheap – but it was far cheaper than war.
Even at the height of the Reagan buildup, sustaining US forces in Europe consumed less than 6.5% of the defense budget. That was not entanglement, McConnell said – it was an investment.
And Americans knew it. In 1989, as the Soviet Union collapsed, three-quarters of the country still supported maintaining NATO. In 2019, support was even higher – before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Putin didn’t provoke NATO – NATO responded to Putin
McConnell also took aim at a resurgent argument on the right: that NATO expansion provoked Russian aggression.
History, he said, shows the opposite. The US and its allies spent decades courting Moscow – integrating Russia into global markets, offering partnership with NATO, and sending billions in assistance.
Vladimir Putin rejected coexistence in favor of imperial revival.
Finland and Sweden did not rush into NATO because Washington twisted their arms. They joined because Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.
If Putin is looking for someone to blame, McConnell quipped, “he ought to look in a mirror.”
Why Greenland matters – and why it doesn’t
The sharpest edge of McConnell’s speech came when he turned to Greenland – and to recent threats and rhetoric suggesting the US might seek control of the territory.
Yes, McConnell said, the Arctic matters. Yes, Denmark and other Nordic allies recognize the strategic stakes and are investing heavily in regional security. And yes, the US has deep, longstanding access to Greenland – access granted by willing partners.
What the administration has not shown, McConnell argued, is what America would gain from blowing up that trust.
“I have yet to hear a single thing we need from Greenland that this sovereign people is not already willing to grant us,” he said.
What is at stake is not just Greenland, he warned, but whether the US intends to face China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea with allies – or alone.
Allies, public opinion, and closing warning
McConnell ended where he began: with the American people.
Polls show just 17% support trying to take control of Greenland. Meanwhile, support for NATO and Article 5 remains strong – and growing.
Notably, nearly one in five Americans who initially favored leaving NATO reversed course once they learned how much European allies are increasing defense spending.
That, McConnell suggested, is the real political lesson Washington is missing.
The public is not allergic to alliances. It is allergic to freeloading – and increasingly, that charge no longer applies to Europe.
McConnell did not mention the word “Trump.” He did not need to.
The speech read as a preemptive rebuttal to a foreign policy vision that treats alliances as leverage rather than force multipliers, and loyalty as a bargaining chip rather than a strategic asset.
The danger, McConnell warned, is not that NATO will fail America. It is that America will fail NATO – and discover too late what it has given up.
In Washington, where skepticism of alliances is once again fashionable, McConnell offered a reminder drawn from history: peace through strength has never meant peace through solitude.