[Salon] Trump Wants NATO To Be The Same Racket That It Has Always Been

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/02/trump-wants-nato-to-be-the-same-racket-that-it-has-always-been.html#more

Trump Wants NATO To Be The Same Racket That It Has Always Been

February 24, 2024

There is this weird claim in librul media that Donald Trump, should he be reelected as president, would shun NATO.

Fears of a NATO Withdrawal Rise as Trump Seeks a Return to Power - NY Times, Dec 9 2023

I have found no evidence that would justify the headline. In fact the authors remark:

Yet as he runs to regain the White House, Mr. Trump has said precious little about his intentions. His campaign website contains a single cryptic sentence: “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.” He and his team refuse to elaborate.

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Trump’s incendiary NATO remarks send very real shudders through Europe - CNN, Feb 12 2024

What causes the actual 'shudders' is that Trump attempts to use NATO to blackmail member countries into buying more U.S. produced weapons:

[W]hen the former president suggested on Saturday that he would let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member that doesn’t meet spending guidelines, the impact was acute.

He recalled what he said was a conversation with a “large” NATO ally – it was unclear who he was referring to or when the conversation took place – which, according to his telling, had declined to spend the 2% recommended equivalent of their GDP on defense, but nevertheless wanted assurances from the US that they would be protected if Russia attacked. Trump said he would not give such an assurance, as the ally was “delinquent,” and Russian President Vladimir Putin should feel free to have his way.

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Trump’s NATO Threat Reflects a Wider Shift on America’s Place in the World - NY Times, Feb 15 2024

This 'threat' was again purely about blackmailing other countries to spend more money on defense:

When former President Donald J. Trump told a campaign rally in South Carolina last weekend that he would encourage Russia to attack NATO allies who “didn’t pay,” there were gasps of shock in Washington, London, Paris, Tokyo and elsewhere around the world.

No one was shocked by that. The U.S., and Trump, have played that game since NATO existed.

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Trump didn’t quit NATO, but a potential second term alarms allies - Washington Post, Feb 19 2024

Trump’s provocation, delivered brashly to a cheering crowd of thousands in Conway, S.C., was largely consistent with the position he’s voiced on NATO since at least the 1980s. He followed up with several social media posts demanding that allies should “PAY UP” and suggesting that he is dangling U.S. withdrawal to pressure them to boost their own military spending.

The article fails to quote even one of the U.S. allies which are allegedly 'alarmed' over the 'thread'.

Trump is not against NATO. He simply wants to use it to get more money for the U.S. of A. Michael Tracey reminds us that Trump, during his first presidency, has never ever acted against NATO:

The idea that Trump will undermine NATO conflicts with everything Trump actually did while he was in office - Michael Tracy, Feb 22 2024

Unfortunately, the media’s professional Trump alarmists simply cannot countenance a reality-based version of Trump, so instead they must eternally cling to their fictionalized, Putin-colluding version. They might not even know, for instance, that Trump presided over two rounds of NATO expansion — Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. While perhaps not the most formidable powers in the NATO military alliance, their seamless absorption was made possible by Trump’s fulsome support for enlarging the bloc — notwithstanding any vague NATO-skeptical rhetoric he might have inchoately dabbled in.

Proceeding with these rounds of NATO expansion required Trump to take presidential action on multiple occasions, including personally signing the final ‘instrument of accession’ formalizing the countries as NATO member-states. Philip Reeker, a State Department official testifying on behalf of the Trump Administration in support of expanding NATO, said in 2019: “Let me begin by reaffirming the role of NATO. As President Trump has said, the alliance has been the bulwark of international peace and security for 70 years.”

Given the wildly disproportionate attention paid to Trump rhetoric over Trump policy, few of the current media alarmists are likely even aware that Trump expanded NATO twice. Nor could they come up with a convincing explanation for how this fits with their hallucinogenic nightmare of Trump surrendering NATO to Putin.

Most European countries would do well without NATO. There are currently no large unfinished conflicts in Europe that are threatening to escalate into wars. The Baltic states may fear some Russian intervention. Without NATO cover they would have to tone down their loud anti-Russian voices and would have to accommodate the parts of their population that are of Russian heritage. I would be fine with that.

Without NATO the west European countries would likely agree to some common defense treaty but keep their defense spending and military forces down to levels that allow for growing them if necessary but below the numbers need for an actual war. East European countries would probably spend more to defense and keep larger forces if only to appease those parts of their population which still have an irrational fear of Russia.

A defense spending range based of GDP, as the U.S. has tried to press NATO countries into, is irrational. The actual GDP of a country is not related to the individual threat level it has to live with (compare Luxemburg, Switzerland and North Korea).

Why then should the defense spending be align with GDP? The one reason a European country might want to stick to NATO is that it would otherwise have to fear a U.S. intervention. But given that the U.S. has, since the 1990s lost much of its military capabilities, and lost all campaigns that it had waged during my life time, I think that such a risk is much lower than many people perceive.

Posted by b on February 24, 2024 at 16:09 UTC | Permalink