Analysis: Trump is bullying NATO again. But Americans like the alliance

For the second time in the still-quite-young 2026 calendar year, President Donald Trump is threatening to blow up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Americans decidedly like, over a foreign policy adventure they decidedly do not.

First it was his designs on taking Greenland. Now it’s the Iran war.

Trump has repeatedly directed his ire toward NATO members over their lack of assistance to the US against Iran. After calling NATO a “paper tiger” and saying he was considering withdrawing from the alliance last week, he hosted on Wednesday NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, who told CNN Trump was “clearly disappointed” with many of its allies.

The president then bemoaned the alliance on social media, referring to when allies resisted his efforts to take control of Greenland, a self-governing territory of fellow NATO ally Denmark.

“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!”

It remains unlikely that Trump could legally pull the United States out of the alliance; that is one of the few ways in which Congress Trump-proofed the US government between his first and second terms. Thanks in part to now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio when he was a US senator, Congress in 2023 passed a provision requiring it to sign off on a withdrawal.

And it’s possible Trump’s talk is bluster intended to force NATO to help the US in some way against Iran (with whom the US is in a fragile truce). Rutte signaled Thursday there could be some movement on that front when it comes to opening the Strait of Hormuz.

But we also saw during the Greenland saga how even steps short of withdrawal can damage the alliance. Allies like Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney began talking in terms of moving forward without basing the alliance around the United States anymore.

NATO support is high — but it’s increasingly polarized

One thing is clear from public opinion polling: To the extent the Iran war further diminishes the NATO alliance, it would seem to be yet another reason for Americans to oppose the conflict even more strongly than they already do.

Polling in recent months has shown large majorities of Americans like NATO and view it as important — even as the once nonpartisan issue has become somewhat more polarized.

An AP-NORC poll in February, after Trump said he’d secured a vague “framework of a future deal” on Greenland and before the Iran war began, showed 70% of Americans said being a NATO member was “very” (40%) or “somewhat” good (30%) for the United States.

That was the highest reading since at least 2022, when NATO united to support Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s invasion.

Similarly, Gallup polling the same month showed more than three-quarters of Americans supported increasing (28%) or maintaining (49%) the current US commitment to NATO. That combined total was the highest in Gallup polling dating back to 1998 (albeit with no surveys between 1998 and 2022).

Gallup even showed about 6 in 10 Republicans supported increasing or maintaining the current commitment — up from less than half in 2022. And only 13% of Republicans wanted to withdraw entirely from the alliance, as Trump has floated.

The polling does seem to have shifted a bit since the Iran war started.

The Pew Research Center’s poll in late March, about a month after the war started, showed the percentage of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents who said NATO benefits the United States a “great deal” or a “fair amount” dropped from 49% a year ago to 38% today.

But the poll still showed nearly 6 in 10 Americans viewed NATO favorably and said it was beneficial to the United States.

Taken together, the data suggests recent events have impacted Americans’ views of NATO.

After the Greenland flap, public support for the alliance appeared to increase. Which would make sense given Americans overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s efforts to take over the island. (A Reuters-Ipsos poll in January showed Americans said 2-to-1 that they were concerned the episode would damage NATO and other US alliances.)

And now the Iran war, which is more popular on the right than taking Greenland was, appears to have convinced some Republicans that Trump is right about NATO’s lack of utility.

It does bear emphasizing that NATO was created as a defensive alliance — not to assist in whatever war of choice one of its member states launches. So one could make a convincing case that NATO did its job by standing up for Greenland and that there’s no direct comparison between that and the Iran war. Also, the only time NATO’s Article 5 collective defense provision was invoked was to support the United States after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

How Trump can wound NATO

Exactly what happens next is a big open question.

Trump can’t withdraw from NATO without getting sign-off from Congress, which would be a tall task.

But that doesn’t mean Trump can’t wound the alliance.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week on a few ideas circulating inside the Trump administration, including pulling US troops out of countries deemed especially unhelpful with Iran, or possibly even closing a base in one of them. (Trump in 2020 pulled 12,000 troops from Germany, though that move was later reversed by Joe Biden.)

The president has also damaged alliances with NATO and other allies via his tariffs and through his general tendency to treat them no better — if not worse — than some adversaries.

Perhaps one of the most undersold ways Trump has hurt NATO is by legitimizing Russian President Vladimir Putin on the world stage. He’s pushed the United States — and by extension, the world — more toward a situation in which “might makes right” and big countries can pick on smaller ones. Carney labeled this the decline of the “rules-based order.”

The consequences of the Iran war will likely be long lasting. And in few arenas could that be more the case than the future of the NATO alliance.