Secretary of War Pete Hegseth tore into NATO on Thursday, branding the military alliance a paper tiger and demanding Europeans finally take responsibility for their own defense.
Hegseth went on to call for a return to "NATO 1.0," the era when Europeans understood that NATO's power came not from "small flags on fancy tables" but from "warriors." It's a feature of the military alliance that Europeans have been happy to ignore, vastly preferring the negotiating table, meetings, and international governing bodies over legitimate, hard defense.
🚨 JUST IN: SecWar Pete Hegseth tells NATO to their FACES they've been a PAPER TIGER free-riding off America, and it's NOT flying anymore
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 18, 2026
"For too long, NATO has been a paper tiger and a one-way street. NO MORE!" 🔥
"Europe was NOT supposed to be a dependency of the United… pic.twitter.com/03Xdq7hJfH
"For too long, NATO has been a paper tiger and a one-way street. No more," the Secretary of War said. "And that's what the Hague Summit is all about. That's what defense spending commitments are all about. Transforming NATO back into a real military alliance that's focused on hard power and real deterrence."
A NATO 3.0 modeled on the NATO 1.0 that won the Cold War, with our allies actually taking the lead in Europe's conventional defense. And that's what NATO was always supposed to be and what its framers like President Eisenhower always expected. Europe was not supposed to be a dependency of the United States. That's not what Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, or Conrad Adenauer wanted or expected. No, Europe was supposed to be a military power allied with a strong America. This is the essence of NATO 1.0. As Dwight Eisenhower himself said as early as 1951, if in ten years all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole process will have failed.
"Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander then, not yet our nation's 34th president. But he and his allied counterparts, all of them still living in the shadow of World War II, understood that NATO's power did not come from committees or from meetings or from small flags on fancy tables. It came from warriors," Hegseth said. "And for Europe's defense, it had come from NATO allies."
This comes as President Trump has voiced massive displeasure with European allies, especially amid the war in Iran. The U.S. launched military strikes without consulting NATO partners, and Europe flatly refused to directly assist, a move Trump called "shameful" and uncharacteristic of allies. He went on to say that the Europeans "haven't been friends when we needed them" and threatened to punish the military alliance by potentially reviewing whether to withdraw American troops from Europe altogether.
European powers, for their part, have agreed to a new distribution of senior leadership across NATO's Command Structure, giving Europe more control of the alliance's military operations. They now control all three Joint Force Commands, UK leads Norfolk, Italy leads Naples, and Germany and Poland share Brunssum. The U.S. still maintains key theater commands, but the move is clearly a step toward a more Euro-centric NATO that sidelines Washington from the alliance's top decision-making positions.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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