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ABOARD AIR FORCE TWO — High above the West Coast, flying home from a diplomatic mission to Asia, National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien reflected Monday on the notion that tough love is the finest love of all. Sometimes only a close friend has the concern or the courage to say what other won’t: Put down the fork, put away the bottle, and pay your bills, before you get into deeper trouble. Far better to hear such advice from a friend than from a boss, business partner, or banker.

“It’s counterintuitive to some on the Left, who believe that subservience, acquiescence, and enabling our friends somehow helps them,” O’Brien told me. “What helps them is to be candid, truthful, and frank with them about what we can and can’t do, and what we need them to do.”

Leftist Joe Biden foolishly denounces Trump’s therapeutic prodding of some U.S. strategic associates as a diabolical effort to “reject our allies” and “retreat from” the world.

O’Brien cites “burden sharing” as one example of Trump’s tough love. “It’s NATO increasing their defense spending by $400 billion over a 10-year period. That makes the West safer. It makes Europe safer.” 

This is precisely what President Donald J. Trump envisioned at his first Atlantic-alliance summit in May 2017. “NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations,” Trump said, “for 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they’re supposed to be paying for their defense.”

“Since 2016, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted that European allies and Canada will have added $130 billion to their defense budget,” Heritage Foundation scholar Daniel Kochis explained. An additional $270 billion have been pledged through 2024. “This is unprecedented progress,” Stoltenberg declared.

The president also is pressuring Berlin to scrap the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which would import Russian energy. “Germany will have almost 70 percent of their country controlled by Russia with natural gas,” Trump said in Brussels in July 2018. “You tell me, is that appropriate?”

Rather than let America’s friends — Chancellor Angela Markel and her people — become addicted to Kremlin-controlled energy, Trump urges Merkel to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas. While America and Germany sometimes disagree, the United States will not shut the gas spigots in deepest winter to demand concessions, as Vladimir Putin did in January 2009. Moscow halted gas to Ukraine, and downstream customers shivered. According to NBC News, “Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, and Poland reported substantial drops in supplies.” Putin did likewise with oil shipments to Belarus last January.

A back rub for Angela? No. Tough love? Yes.

“You see the Japanese starting to spend more money and improve their capabilities,” O’Brien stated. In fact, President Trump reportedly pressed Tokyo to quadruple its annual payments from $2 billion to $8 billion for some 54,000 U.S. GIs stationed there. “The President has made clear that allies and partners should contribute more to their shared defense,” a State Department spokesman told Reuters in November 2019.

In response, Japan will spend a record $55 billion on defense next year, 8 percent above 2020’s outlay. These funds will help acquire U.S. stealth fighters, among other arms.

“You also see increased defense spending in Taiwan, which is something that the president has been advocating for some time,” O’Brien said. Taiwan’s cabinet announced last month a 10.25 percent hike in next year’s military budget totaling US$1.5 billion. Taipei spent $1 billion in August for 66 U.S. F-16V fighter jets and plans to purchase some $10 billion in U.S. mines, drones, coastal-defense cruise missiles, and other weapons that should give China pause.

While Joe Biden and Hate Trump, Inc. hammer the president for expecting America’s friends to fulfill their potential, the national security advisor believes this approach spreads good in multiple directions. “All of these things make those countries safer,” Robert C. O’Brien said. “They have the result of strengthening our alliances.”

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research. Bucknell University’s Michael Malarkey contributed research to this opinion piece. Murdock has known O’Brien since they won college scholarships from the Washington Crossing Foundation in the 1980s.