America just skipped December’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting. That’s a first in over two decades. Part of the reason is the alliance’s irrelevance to President Donald Trump’s personalized, high-stakes peace negotiation to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Another is likely the administration’s weariness over Europe’s anemic defense spending. The alliance’s current 2 percent of GDP benchmark has long been a source of transatlantic friction. It is also a dangerously simplistic metric that measures inputs, not outputs.

The benchmark quantifies treasure, not strategic capability, and overlooks one of the most critical (and undervalued) contributions allies can make: maritime power—specifically, commercial sealift capacity. There is a solution. READ MORE