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Opinion | Trump’s Nato rant shows him up as a threat to Europe’s security
- While previous US leaders have at times expressed frustration with the alliance, they also regularly affirmed their commitment to Nato and its pledge of collective defence
- Not so Trump, who neither cares for Nato nor understands that deterrence won’t work if a key member cannot be trusted to enforce the line
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Given Donald Trump’s latest repugnant remarks criticising Nato last weekend, it’s safe to say that the former US president is no longer just a threat to American democracy but also to peace on the European continent.
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We’ve heard the anti-Nato rhetoric before. Ever since joining the campaign trail in 2015, Trump has displayed notorious disdain for the transatlantic alliance. So much so that his foreign policy “vision” then and now has been based on its obsolescence and the falsehood that America’s allies are parasites feeding off Uncle Sam’s wealth and generosity.
Criticism of European allies and their reluctance to carry their weight in terms of defence spending is neither new – George W. Bush and Barack Obama both uttered their frustration in talks with European leaders – nor unjustified – still only 18 of the 31 Nato member countries are expected to meet the 2 per cent spending target this year.
However, let’s not forget how successful Nato has been in maintaining peace on its members’ territories, and how important unity and an unconditional commitment to each other have been to make this happen.
Without the US, there is no Nato and probably no peace. During the Cold War, Nato was a bulwark against the omnipresent Soviet threat on the European continent and elsewhere. The Soviet expansionist fantasies that had been successful in various other places around the globe were never able to get a strong foothold within Europe, thanks to Article 5 – collective defence.
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