In his second term, President Trump has continued his criticism of NATO and European allies’ defense efforts while the United States pursues a reset with Russia—the main threat to European security. How will the U.S. defense presence in Europe change, and what reforms are under consideration for the U.S. command structure that might affect the relationship with NATO and Europe? Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith joins this episode of The Zeitgeist to discuss U.S. security engagement with Europe, potential changes to the transatlantic architecture, and how those changes will impact deterrence and peace in Europe.



Host

Jeff Rathke, President, AGI

Guest

Julianne Smith, Former U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO



Transcript

Jeff Rathke

It’s wonderful to have listeners back to this episode of The Zeitgeist, and I would like to welcome as today’s guest, Julie Smith. Julie, welcome.

Julianne Smith

Thank you.

Jeff Rathke

Julie Smith is perhaps known to listeners because this is not the first time she has been a guest on this podcast. The last time, if I recall, was when you were serving as the United States Permanent Representative to NATO, and we were grateful for your time then. Julie was the PermRep to NATO from 2021 until 2024, and she has also previously served in the White House, in the Pentagon, as well as leading research programs at some of Washington’s most renowned think tanks.

We are delighted to have her here to talk with us today about the future of the United States’ security and defense relationship with Europe. Where I would start, of course, people are very familiar about the way President Trump talks about NATO. There’s sort of a mixture of skepticism and antagonism that one hears. He takes credit often for the increases in European defense spending—some might argue Vladimir Putin has something to do with that, too—but it’s true that the defense spending among NATO allies increased during President Trump’s first term. There is a lot of talk about that kind of political relationship of the United States to its European allies. We’ll talk about that, perhaps for a little bit today, but what I also want to get at, is how the United States is set up to deliver and bolster security in Europe, how that might change, and what those changes might mean. And the reason I wanted to talk about this now is that we have a number of ideas that seem to be germinating within the Trump administration, and of course, we have a looming NATO Summit happening June 24 and 25 in The Hague in the Netherlands. With that, Julie, maybe just to start off, what are your observations about the political commitment of the United States to its allies and to deterrence in Europe, if you look at it from the perspective of someone who used to be at the forefront of that relationship on a day-to-day basis? How strong or how weak, how much change do you think there’s been?

Julianne Smith

On the one hand, we have had a number of positive signals, we have a new U.S. PermRep in Brussels who arrived pretty quickly. He was able to get confirmed fairly early into the beginning of this Trump administration, Trump’s second term. That’s a good sign because that always means that it’s a priority for the White House. We have also had an early engagement between the new-ish NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and President Trump, an Oval Office meeting that frankly went quite well. Those two have a pretty good rapport. They go back quite some years, they know one another, they respect one another. And what Rutte was able to get out of that meeting was a commitment that the president will be coming to the June summit that you just mentioned, and that’s good news.