As the North Atlantic Treaty Organization conducts its seventy-fifth-anniversary summit in Washington, Americans increasingly wonder about the value of U.S. alliances. Some officials and pundits dismiss such questions as isolationism and either implicitly or explicitly criticize the questioners. Others (including some U.S. allies) seek to prove that America’s alliances are “worth it” with reams of data. Neither chiding nor charts will likely build public support. Instead, U.S. leaders must explain what our allies can do for America today and in the future—and why that matters.

During the three decades following the end of the Cold War, America’s leaders largely failed to define the purpose of U.S. alliances in a simple and straightforward manner. Before 1991, NATO’s purpose was clear: to deter and, if necessary, to defend against and ultimately defeat a Soviet invasion of Europe. After 1991, NATO’s goals included a confusing mixture of extraterritorial peacemaking, counterterrorism, and social work combined with an apparent desire to expand its territorial limits. While America’s allies contributed importantly to this, America’s citizens grew distant from and eventually skeptical toward much if not most of it.

Underlying this is the reality that U.S. leaders failed to define a vision for American foreign policy or U.S. international leadership that Americans were prepared to support. The American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—better known for their cost in irreplaceable lives, money, and leadership attention than for their advancement of U.S. interests—soured Americans on international activism.

Indeed, the two wars created the domestic environment in which voters sequentially elected two presidents who questioned U.S. interventions, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. This is why allies’ contributions to those two efforts, whether through NATO (in Afghanistan) or President George W. Bush’s coalition of the willing (in Iraq) do little to move Americans today. Nor do allies’ roles in Libya, Syria, and other complex and frustrating conflicts. Meanwhile, U.S. leaders did little to explain NATO’s absorption of new members or how the outcome would benefit the United States. Related Senate votes prompted little debate and even less public discussion. 

Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, its proxy/covert war in eastern Ukraine in 2014-2022, and its eventual full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 thus occurred at a time when many if not most Americans rejected the country’s participation in foreign wars and had murky views of not only NATO’s goals but even its membership. Little wonder that Americans are evenly divided on whether U.S. support for Ukraine helps or hurts American national security, albeit with a considerable partisan divide in attitudes. Or that more than a year after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, only 17 percent saw Russia as the greatest threat to the United States in a major public opinion poll; 50 percent viewed China as the larger danger.

Some strongly encourage the latter view, arguing that the United States should limit its support for Ukraine to ensure that Washington can fully focus on China; Europe should deal with Russia and Ukraine instead. Considering China’s vastly larger economy and rapidly growing military capabilities, this is a logical and practical view—with one substantial exception: it does not acknowledge why European governments have chosen to become U.S. allies. The answer is obvious; they want U.S. assistance in dealing with major security threats like Russia. If the United States is unwilling to provide that help, it weakens a core objective of many European countries in joining and contributing to NATO. Urging South Korea to manage the threat from North Korea so that America can concentrate on China similarly sets aside Seoul’s principal goal of aligning with the United States.

This is a reciprocity problem but in the opposite direction. Just as the United States seeks reciprocity in its alliance relationships—in America’s case, largely in the form of assurances that allies take sufficient military and financial responsibility for their defense, including financial support for U.S. bases—our allies look for reciprocity. Should the United States face a serious military conflict with China, and seek assistance from American allies, many will grapple with its potential costs for their economies and societies. If this comes in the wake of U.S. insistence that allies address “their” problems largely alone, Washington is less likely to win help with “our” problems. 

In broad terms, America’s alliances are more likely to be closer, and reciprocal, if the United States invests in them itself. That serves U.S. interests because alliances are founded on shared interests and often shared threats. Indeed, as Beijing and Moscow become increasingly (and dangerously) assertive, America’s allies have generally responded with substantial new investments in their military capabilities.

From this perspective, clearly defining the purpose of America’s alliances helps both to engage U.S. allies in addressing U.S. concerns and in securing public support for U.S. alliances. In 1996, the Center for the National Interest (then the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom), Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and the RAND Corporation jointly sponsored the Commission on U.S. National Interests. Its final report, “America’s National Interests,” sought to provide a systematic and prioritized outline of U.S. national interests in the post-Cold War world.

While both America and the world have evolved, the commission report highlighted the challenges of that era that persist (in new ways) today, including: an America “adrift” and “confused” about its role in the world, “opportunities missed and threats emerging,” and the need to reground American foreign policy on U.S. national interests and to establish a hierarchy of interests. The report was especially valuable in proposing rigorous criteria for that hierarchy, including the statement that “vital national interests are conditions that are strictly necessary to safeguard and enhance the well-being of Americans in a free and secure nation.” (This is a much higher standard than is common in political discourse.) 

With this tight definition, the report identified five vital U.S. national interests: 1) “prevent, deter, and reduce the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons attacks on the United States”; 2) “prevent the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Europe or Asia”; 3) “prevent the emergence of a hostile major power on U.S. borders or in control of the seas”; 4) “prevent the catastrophic collapse of major global systems: trade, financial markets, supplies of energy, and environmental”; and 5) “ensure the survival of U.S. allies.”

The survival of U.S. allies (a definition that does not, incidentally, require their full territorial integrity) is a vital American interest because our allies’ destruction, desertion, or abandonment would dramatically weaken America’s ability to protect its citizens and their interests. U.S. allies likewise contribute essentially to the U.S. pursuit of each of the other four vital interests, though in today’s world, preventing the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Europe or Asia and preventing a hostile major power from controlling the seas are perhaps America’s most immediate concerns.

The United States cannot adequately protect its citizens without engaging deeply beyond its borders or beyond its Atlantic and Pacific shores. The United States will face grave challenges if its adversaries establish hegemony in either Europe (most likely through division and disarray) or Asia (through a combination of enticements and intimidation) and establish de facto control of their polities and resources. America’s alliance relationships are critical in preventing that outcome. Rather than demeaning Americans who are uncertain about our alliances, or trying to “educate” them, those who see value in U.S. alliances should do a much better job of explaining what they are for.

About the Author: Paul J. Saunders 

Paul J. Saunders is President of the Center for the National Interest and a member of its board of directors. His expertise spans U.S. foreign and security policy, energy security and climate change, U.S.-Russia relations and Russian foreign policy, and U.S. relations with Japan and South Korea. Saunders is a Senior Advisor at Energy Innovation Reform Project, where he served as President from 2019 to 2024. He has been a member of EIRP’s board of directors since 2013 and served as chairman from 2014 to 2019. At EIRP, Saunders has focused on the collision between great power competition and the energy transition, including such issues as energy security, energy technology competition, and climate policy in a divided world. In this context, he has engaged deeply in energy and climate issues in the Indo-Pacific region, especially U.S. relations with Japan and South Korea. His most recent project at EIRP is an assessment of Russia’s evolving role in the global energy system.

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