NEW YORK ¨C Defense alliances are complicated things, but in the U.S. we have bipartisan clarity on one thing: Our allies are letting us down.

¡°If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection,¡± Republican front-runner Donald Trump said this weekend, ¡°I don¡¯t think it would be around.¡± He has also shamed America¡¯s top defense partners in Asia: Japan and South Korea. ¡°We have 28,000 people on the border separating South Korea from this maniac in North Korea. We get nothing,¡± he said. ¡°We get nothing. They¡¯re making a fortune.¡±

President Barack Obama has a cooler demeanor, but the same icy attitude toward long-standing military partners. ¡°Free riders aggravate me,¡± he told the Atlantic¡¯s Jeffrey Goldberg, not long after informing U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron that the longtime ¡°special relationship¡± between the nations was at risk unless the Brits met the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on the military. He also accused the Gulf Arab nations of ¡°pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game.¡±