Tags
alliances, allies, burden-sharing, deterrence, Europe, foreign policy, national security, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, nuclear deterrent, nuclear umbrella, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Trump
Full disclosure: For literally decades (can I be that old?), I’ve strongly favored a phase out of the longstanding U.S. defense (and especially nuclear defense) guarantee that has stood at the core of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since its founding in 1949. Yet even so, for two main reasons, I’ve been appalled by Donald Trump’s recent remarks on the alliance.
First, there’s the issue of timing. With a major land war launched by Russia still raging on the borders of NATO’s eastern-most (and newest) members, this couldn’t be a worse moment for anyone to reveal, as Trump divulged at a campaign rally last week, that:
“One of the presidents of a big [NATO] country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us? I said, ‘You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”
It’s true that Trump didn’t say that he’d do this now. But let’s be real. Not only was it close, but it’s hard to believe that Trump didn’t realize this. And at a time when the current situation is plenty explosive enough, including the possibility that the Ukraine war spills over onto a NATO country by accident, his words were just inexcusably reckless.
Second, an arguably even more serious charge can be leveled against the former president’s remarks: They were completely unnecessary. There’s absolutely no evidence that Trump’s popular support has ever been boosted by his repeated and harsh (and in my opinion, completely justified) criticisms of defense free-riding by most NATO members. It’s also admittedly tempting to force the worst deadbeats to pay the worst consequences by singling then out for total U.S. withdrawal (although geography alone will surely doom any chances of protecting certain countries but not their next-door neighbors).
But why on earth would anyone brag that they’d actively encourage unprovoked aggression by Russia (or by any country)? It’s one thing to argue that the United States would be more secure if it didn’t defend so many countries (like Ukraine, in my opinion) whose fate has always been marginal to America’s against a nuclear-armed power. Yet how does encouraging Russia to do whatever the hell they want advance or defend any important U.S. Interests? In fact, how can it benefit the United States when this aggression would take place in close proximity to a region (Western Europe) whose fate might not be worth risking a nuclear war, but that can’t be responsibly viewed with indifference?
Indeed, these last questions must be asked even by those who insist that Trump’s remarks are just an ace negotiator’s ploy. Lots of consequences for the free-riders could have been listed other than encouraging Russia to attack them. For example, he could have imposed tariffs on the worst deadbeats that numerically would be somehow connected mathematically to the degree that they’ve fallen short of official NATO spending targets that they all agreed to reach years ago (after decades of vaguer U.S. efforts and feebler allied responses that stretch back practically to the alliance’s founding decades ago, as I documented here). And he could still have described the deadbeats them in harshly insulting language.
Finally, Trump’s remarks represented a massively blown opportunity to explain exactly why pervasive NATO free-riding is so important – and in fact outright dangerous for the United States. Sure, it would be nice to have an entire crew of genuine, cooperative allies rather than a group dominated by miserly protectorates.
But however appealing and warranted fairness claims might be, they count for little at best compared with the national security consequences of this long-time situation. Precisely because so many NATO allies – including big, wealthy ones like Germany – spend so little on defending themselves with conventional forces against a nearby adversary they insist they’ve been worried about for decades, the United States was forced to protect them in large measure by brandishing its nuclear arsenal against a power with formidable nuclear forces of its own.
Clearly, this nuclear umbrella helped keep the peace in Europe long after the end of World War II, But at first, the Europe allies and their economies were suffering from wartime devastation. Decades later, that’s obviously far from the case. Yet widespread allied defense skimping is still exposing the American homeland to nuclear attack.
If Trump had made this connection, his comments on NATO (absent the completely gratuitous Russia aggression threat) certainly would have been seen even by some alliance stalwarts as a trenchant observation deserving of much more discussion, rather than a penny-wise, pound-foolish rant. And voicing his critique in a set speech systematically laying out his critique of how globalist security policies have been applied in Europe could have benefited his presidential run even more.
But he made these points in a rant at a campaign rally that was no doubt purely spontaneous and unvetted. After some point, wracking up own-goals is no way to run a campaign for the most important job in the world. And it’s a far worse way for the holder of that job to run the nation’s foreign policy in an increasingly dangerous era+.