Trump was not deterred by the criticism directed at his recent comment, so he doubled down on his position.
“No money should be provided in the form of foreign aid to any country unless it is in the form of a loan, and not just a gift,” he wrote on social media in capital letters. He added: “We should never give money anymore, without hope of getting the amount back, or without attaching conditions to it.”
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Trump has long threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO and will no longer be surrounded by the kind of advisers who prevented him from doing so last time. He tried to withdraw US troops from Germany at the end of his presidency in anger at then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, a withdrawal that was only blocked because President Joe Biden arrived in office in time to overturn the decision.
Anticipating the possibility of America's withdrawal from the world if Trump returns to office, Congress recently passed legislation prohibiting any president from withdrawing from the NATO treaty without Senate approval. But Trump would not even need to formally withdraw from the alliance to make it meaningless.
If it is not possible to rely on the United States to help its partners in Europe, where it has the strongest historical relations, then other countries that have mutual security agreements with Washington, such as Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia, and Argentina, and it is also difficult for Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama to be sure of assistance. American.
Peter Feffer, a Duke University professor and former national security aide to Bush and President Bill Clinton, said Trump could reduce U.S. forces in Europe to a level that “would render any military defense plans hollow” and “regularly abuse U.S. commitment.” In a way that would convince Putin that he has freedom of action.
“Just doing those two things could injure and possibly kill NATO,” Feffer said. “And few allies or partners in other parts of the world will trust any American commitment after seeing us break NATO.”
History suggests that this may lead to more wars, not fewer. When Secretary of State Dean Acheson described a US “defensive perimeter” in Asia in 1950 that did not include South Korea, North Korea invaded the region five months later, starting a bloody war that nonetheless attracted the United States.
The signal Trump is sending to NATO allies such as Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is that they may be on their own by January. This comes just days after Putin told Tucker Carlson that Poland was at fault for Adolf Hitler's invasion in 1939, and the mood in the country could not have been more unstable.
“Article 5 has only been triggered once so far — to assist the United States in Afghanistan after 9/11,” said Radek Sikorski, Poland's Foreign Minister. “Poland sent a brigade for ten years. We did not send a bill to Washington.”
The disdain Trump expresses for NATO is based on a false premise that he has repeated for years even after it has been corrected, an indication that he is either unable to process information that conflicts with an established idea in his head or willing to distort facts to suit it. His favorite novel.
Donald Trump has a strange habit of praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.credit: AP
As he has done many times, Trump criticized NATO partners, whom he described as “latecomers” in paying the costs of American protection. “You have to pay,” he said. “You have to pay your bills.”
In fact, NATO partners do not pay the United States, as Trump implied. NATO members contribute to a common budget for civil and military costs according to a formula based on national income and have historically fulfilled these obligations.
What Trump is misleadingly referring to is the goal set by NATO defense ministers in 2006 that each member spend 2% of its gross domestic product on its military, a standard that NATO leaders ratified in 2014 with an eye toward achieving it by 2024. As of last year, only 11 out of 31 members had achieved that level, and last summer NATO leaders pledged an “enduring commitment” to finally reaching that level. But even those who do not owe the United States money as a result.
Among the members that spend 2 percent of their economic output on defense are Poland and Lithuania, and this number has increased in the past two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO. Other countries have pledged to increase spending in the next few years.
NATO spending is a legitimate concern, according to veteran national security experts, and Trump is not the first president to pressure NATO partners to do more — Bush and Obama have done so, too. Trump was the first to present the alliance as a kind of protection racket in which the United States abandons those who do not “pay,” not to mention being attacked by Russia with Washington’s encouragement.
“NATO’s credibility depends on the credibility of the man who occupies the Oval Office, because the decisions taken there will be decisive in critical situations,” said Carl Bildt, the former prime minister of Sweden, who is close to completing his accession. To the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as its 32nd member.
“This applies to what could be crisis management with some sort of simple approach to the ultimate issue of nuclear deterrence,” he added. “If Putin threatens nuclear strikes against Poland, will Trump say he doesn’t care?”
Trump's obsession with receiving money from his allies extends far beyond Europe. At one point, he attacked the mutual defense treaty with Japan that had been in place since 1951, and at other points he prepared to order US forces to withdraw from South Korea. During an interview in 2021 shortly after leaving office, he made it clear that if he returned to power, he would demand that South Korea pay billions of dollars to keep US forces there.
In fact, South Korea pays $1 billion annually, and spent $9.7 billion on expanding Camp Humphreys for the benefit of American forces. Trump said he wants $5 billion annually.
The uncertainty that would result from Trump's lack of commitment would lead to volatility not seen in years.
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“The only saving grace is that he is potentially so untrustworthy and unpredictable that the Kremlin can become a little unsure,” Bildt said. But they will know that they have a fair chance to play him politically in any crisis.
