President Donald Trump at NATO headquarters in Brussels on June 25, 2025. Trump said Tuesday he is considering pulling the United States out of NATO. (NATO)
STUTTGART, Germany — President Donald Trump said this week that he is considering an American withdrawal from the NATO alliance, citing frustration with allies over their refusal to join the U.S. military campaign against Iran.
“Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration,” Trump said when asked Tuesday if he wanted to pull the U.S. out of the military bloc.
Trump, in an interview with The Telegraph, said he was “never swayed by NATO,” founded in the aftermath of World War II as a bulwark against the Soviet Union.
“I always knew they were a paper tiger, and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump said.
The comments from Trump, who has long criticized NATO, came one day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio blasted allies over disagreements about the conflict with Iran. Rubio said the U.S. needs to reconsider its relations with NATO countries such as Spain, which has denied U.S. access to its bases for Iran operations and refused military overflights.
Under NATO rules, members are required to give one year’s formal notice ahead of pulling out of the alliance. U.S. legislation also makes it harder for a president to unilaterally withdraw.
Rubio, when he was a Florida Republican senator, sponsored a 2023 bill — now law — that requires two-thirds approval in the Senate or an act of Congress to withdraw from NATO. The bipartisan bill also blocks funding for a withdrawal attempt if it is done without that approval.
Trump, however, has recently said that he doesn’t believe congressional support would be necessary if he chose to withdraw. The legislation could face legal challenges over whether it infringes on executive powers.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office said that whether a president has the authority to withdraw from NATO without congressional approval “implicates a long-standing and still-unresolved debate over the Constitution’s allocation of the power to withdraw from treaties.”
Besides legal questions, a NATO withdrawal would upend virtually all of the U.S. force presence in Europe and the basing infrastructure that enables operations stretching across the Continent and into Africa and the Middle East.
American troops are governed in part by a NATO Status of Forces Agreement, which sets the legal foundation for stationing forces in Europe. If NATO SOFA arrangements were voided, the U.S. would likely need to renegotiate those arrangements on a country-by-country basis.
The Telegraph reported last week that the American president also was considering a NATO shake-up that would block members from having a say on alliance decision-making if they don’t meet defense spending requirements. The “pay-to-play” concept would center on meeting Trump’s demand that all members dedicate 5% of gross domestic product to their armed forces.
The Telegraph, citing sources “close to the president,” also reported that Trump was considering pulling troops out of Germany, where the U.S. has around 37,000 service members stationed.
During his first term, Trump sought to pull about 12,000 service members from Germany, but the plan never came to fruition.
