An outburst from Trump about NATO could push Europe to go it alone
Long before Donald J. Trump threatened this weekend that he was willing to let Russia “do whatever they want” against NATO allies who are not contributing enough to collective defense, European leaders were quietly discussing how to prepare for a world in which in which America removes itself as the center of the 75-year-old alliance.
Even taking into account the usual bombast of one of his campaign rallies, where he made his statement on Saturday, Trump could now force the European debate into a much more public phase.
Until now, discussion in the European media has focused on whether the former president would withdraw the United States from NATO if he were to run again.
But the bigger implication of his statement is that he could invite President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to pick a NATO country, as a warning and a lesson to the thirty or so others about heeding the demands of Mr. Trump.
His statement surprised many in Europe, especially after three years in which President Biden, in an effort to restore the confidence in the alliance lost during Trump's four years in power, has repeatedly said that the United States would “do every inch of NATO territory. And while a White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, labeled Trump's comments as “unhinged,” by Sunday morning they had already resonated with those who argued that Europe cannot rely on the United States to deter Russia.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, which consists of European heads of government and determines their common policies, wrote that “reckless statements” like Trump's “only serve Putin's interests.” He wrote that they add urgency to Europe's nascent efforts to “develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense.”
And in Berlin, Norbert Röttgen, member of the German parliament's foreign affairs committee, wrote on social media platform X: “Everyone should watch this video of #Trump to understand that Europe may soon have no choice but to defend itself. ” He added: “Anything else would be capitulation and giving up on ourselves.”
All this doubt will undoubtedly dominate the meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday, and then the Munich Security Conference, an annual gathering of national security leaders, on Friday. And while Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will undoubtedly use the moment to celebrate the NATO solidarity that has been crucial in keeping Ukraine an independent nation two years after the Russian invasion, every statement they make will almost certainly be met with success. doubts about what the alliance will look like in a year's time.
In fact, that reevaluation has been going on for months, some European diplomats and defense officials say, though they have only hinted at it publicly, if at all.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has started talking about how Germany should prepare for the possibility of a decades-long confrontation with Russia. NATO's outgoing Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that the alliance must prepare for a “decades-long confrontation” with Russia.
In a statement on Sunday, Mr Stoltenberg said: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers in greater danger.” He added, echoing NATO members' statements in 2016: “I expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election, the US will remain a strong and committed NATO ally.”
Danish Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen has said that Russia could “test” NATO's solidarity within three to five years by attacking one of its weaker members, in an attempt to break the alliance by to show that others do not want to defend the alliance. “That was not NATO's assessment in 2023,” he told Jyllands-Posten. a Danish newspaperlast week, calling it “new information.”
At its core, the argument being made in Europe centers on whether members of the alliance can be assured that the US nuclear umbrella – the ultimate deterrent to Russian invasion – will continue to cover the 31 members of the NATO alliance .
Britain and France have their own small nuclear arsenals. If NATO's European members were to doubt in the coming year whether the United States would continue to adhere to Article V of the NATO Treaty, which declares that an attack on one is an attack on all, this would almost inevitably undermine the debate revive about who other countries in Europe needed their own nuclear weapons – starting with Germany.
During the last Cold War, that discussion was quite open, in ways that might seem shocking today. Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, declared in 1957 that tactical nuclear weapons – the kind Russia has threatened to use in Ukraine – were “no more than the further development of artillery.” He added: “We obviously can't do it without them.” At a meeting in 1962, he added that the defense of Berlin “must be countered with nuclear weapons from the very beginning.”
For sixty years, the United States helped keep such feelings in check by drawing on the Americans nuclear weapons throughout Europe. They remain there to this day. But the value of that deterrent came into question when Mr. Trump — publicly and privately — urged his aides to withdraw from NATO in 2018.
At the time, Trump's national security team, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and two successive national security advisers, H.R. McMaster and John R. Bolton, worked to prevent Trump from sabotaging the cornerstone of Europe's defense strategy. Their concern was that American influence in Europe would be undermined and Russia emboldened.
Of course, that was all before the war in Ukraine. Now the questions that seemed theoretical to Europeans — starting with whether Putin was willing to try to recapture the lands he rightly believed were Russia's back to Peter the Great — seem vivid and perhaps life-threatening.
As Olaf Scholz, the current German chancellor, prepared to meet with Mr Biden in Washington last week, he wrote in The Wall Street Journal that “Russia's victory in Ukraine would not only mean the end of Ukraine as a free, democratic and independent state, but would also dramatically change the face of Europe.” It would “serve as a blueprint for other authoritarian leaders around the world.”
In Washington, Mr Scholz stressed that Germany has now become the second largest provider of military aid to Ukraine and is part of the European decision in recent weeks to provide $54 billion over the next four years to help rebuild the country. country.
This year, Germany will finally reach its goal of spending 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense – the target set for all NATO countries – years later than initially promised. Europe's commitments to Ukraine now exceed Washington's current promises, at a time when it is unclear whether Republicans in Congress will continue to block additional aid.
Mr. Trump, of course, didn't mention any of this in his threatening comments on Saturday; The fact that Europe is taking up this challenge too late does not fit with his campaign narrative.
But what will resonate in capitals across Europe will be the wording of what he described as a meeting with an unnamed president “of a great country.”
In Mr. Trump's words, the leader asked him, “Well, sir, if we don't pay and we get attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” And Mr. Trump recalled saying, “No, I wouldn't protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You have to pay.”
The story, considered unlikely in many European capitals, reflected, 75 years into the alliance's existence, NATO as more of a protection racket than an alliance.
And whether Mr. Trump wins in November or not, the fact that such a vision of NATO has taken hold among a significant number of Americans represents a shift that will undoubtedly shape Europe's view of the transatlantic alliance for years to come . .
Christopher F. Schuetze And Steven Erlanger contributed reporting from Berlin, and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels.