Though the foreign-policy attention at present is focused on the Middle East, President Donald Trump has a historic opportunity to shift the burden of conventional defense in Europe onto European shoulders. At the NATO summit in the Hague, Trump has an opportunity to fix a problem he has pointed to for decades.

The central U.S. interest in Europe has been preventing one country from dominating the continent —“counterhegemony” in political science-speak. In World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, the United States bore great costs to prevent Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler, and Josef Stalin from gaining control over other European powers. Today, there is no equivalent of Wilhelmine or Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. What this means for U.S. policy in Europe — and what it has meant since the end of the Cold War — is Washington should focus on becoming what Jeane Kirkpatrick in 1990 termed “a normal country in a normal time.”

Instead, when the Cold War ended peacefully, U.S. policymakers kept the U.S. “pacifier” in Europe. Whenever the Europeans would make efforts, however halting, to take up their own defense with more seriousness, the Americans would scuttle the efforts. In 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave a speech in the South of France in which she denounced any European efforts that violated what she termed the “Three Ds”: if Europe undertook any measures that would duplicate NATO capabilities, decouple Europe from NATO, or discriminate against NATO primacy, the Americans would view such measures as hostile.

The Americans undertook NATO expansion, and kept the lead in Europe, at a time when deterrence seemed cheap if not free. All the while, NATO continued expanding, including into countries that are close to indefensible, such as the Baltic states in 2004. Before admitting these countries, U.S. policymakers ignored the defense requirements of these countries until Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Even then, the plans were inadequate, to the point that as late as 2022, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was warning that under existing plans, her country would be “wiped off the map.”

Donald Trump’s view has long been different. In 1987, he took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, observing that our allies’ “stake in their protection is far greater than ours.” In a 1988 appearance on Oprah Winfrey, he laid out a clear goal: to “make our allies pay their fair share.” He clearly held this view through his initial run for president, and into his first administration.

In the first Trump administration, however, establishment advisers like John Bolton and Jim Mattis were reluctant to help their boss pursue this vision. In the second term, Trump is surrounded by people who seem more willing to do so. The question is whether they have a coherent approach at all, and if so, whether it will work.

Thus far, the administration seems to be focused on forcing NATO members to dedicate 3.5 percent of GDP to defense, then counting the countries that do so as good allies. This policy has at least two downsides. First, denominators matter. 3.5 percent of Latvia’s GDP is $1.5 billion. 3.5 percent of Germany’s GDP is $156 billion. Realistically, no matter how much the Baltic states spend, their efforts will be mostly irrelevant to conventional deterrence in Europe. Their combined active-duty armed forces contain roughly 40,000 troops—around the same number of personnel as the New York Police Department. (One should clarify further: the NYPD is probably better armed.)

The second problem is that the administration has shown little interest in pursuing U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe. After Russia invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration sent an additional 20,000 U.S. servicemembers to reassure Europe of the U.S. commitment. With Russia having demonstrated it cannot overpower Ukraine, there is little reason to reassure the Europeans now. In fact, the danger of reassuring Europe is that you may succeed; a reassured Europe is less likely to step up and spend more, and better, on defense.

And that is what U.S. policy should be pursuing. NATO Europe possesses roughly 10 times Russia’s GDP, five to six times its population, and, depending on how one counts, two to three times as much military spending as Russia. True, there are redundancies in that spending, and the questions of command and threat perceptions loom large for European countries squared off against Russia. Still, a Kremlin that cannot overwhelm Ukraine cannot pose a hegemonic threat against the core European powers.

In 2011, no less an establishment figure than Robert Gates warned that “there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense.”

The funds have grown more precious, and the patience has worn thinner. Americans should hope that the Trump administration succeeds in a fundamental rebalance of the transatlantic relationship.