Do Europeans support NATO? They certainly fret a lot about the future of the Atlantic Alliance. To hear them tell it, a return of Donald Trump to the White House next January would augur cataclysm. “The anxiety is massive” according to a typical statement from European elites relayed by The Atlantic’s McKay Coppins. They fear the United States, the dominant member of the alliance, might throttle back its support for European security—retreating into isolationism, enacting soft-on-Russia policies, shifting military resources and policy energy to the Indo-Pacific to confront a domineering China, or some alloy of these. And Trump would almost certainly resume lambasting allies for free-riding on American-supplied defense. He would hector them publicly, early, and often to spend more—much as he did during his last tenure as president.

Europe stands to be the biggest loser from this fall’s U.S. elections.

But rather than concentrate on what Trump says, or what Europeans say about what he might do, why don’t we look at what Europe—and for that matter Canada, another laggard—does in the defense sphere. Communiques and public statements out of the recent 75th-anniversary summit in Washington DC put the accent on the positive. Quoth the official statement from allied capitals: “We welcome that more than two-thirds of Allies have fulfilled their commitment of at least 2% of GDP annual defence spending and commend those Allies who have exceeded it.” Flip that upbeat statement around. It means that a........

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