Of all the warnings in President Trump's arsenal, quitting the NATO military alliance is among those he's wielded the most.
Now he's doing it again.
Asked by Britain's Telegraph newspaper if he is reconsidering U.S. membership of NATO, he said: Oh yes… I would say [it's] beyond reconsideration – fuming again that his partners weren't joining America's military operations, alongside Israel, against Iran.
I just think it should be automatic, he emphasized in his remarks to the paper.
Trump's invective underlines again his misunderstanding of how this 32-member alliance works.
NATO's Article 5 commits it to collective defense. An attack against one member is deemed to be an attack against all but invoking this principle requires consensus. The 1949 treaty only referred to crises in Europe and North America.
One ally after another has held back from joining a war they weren't consulted on, given they still don't understand its goals in the face of mixed messaging from the Trump administration.
Article 5 has only been triggered once, in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the US in 2001.
Trump also referenced Ukraine in the Telegraph, saying: We've been there automatically, including Ukraine. After Russia's audacious full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, President Biden did take a leading role in shaping the response of individual Western governments as he believed President Putin's actions threatened them all.
NATO, as an alliance, provided assistance but avoided the dangerous prospect of becoming directly involved as a party to this conflict.
Even before Trump entered the White House in 2017, he repeatedly dismissed NATO as a paper tiger, described it as obsolete, and said that it was costing a fortune for the US.
This year, he's mocked the alliance, saying Russia would have occupied all of Ukraine if the US had not been NATO's enforcer.
Trump almost walked out in early 2019, during his first term in office. We saw clear signs that Trump was preparing to act on his threat, the former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote in his recent memoir, On my Watch.
In his telling, Trump immediately acknowledged that praise on social media and then didn't make the speech the White House had reportedly drafted for a US pullout.
At the center of Trump's concerns was the 2014 agreement that countries should spend 2% of their GDP on defense; at the time, it was only described as a guideline. Military spending has ramped up significantly by almost all NATO members, partly in response to Trump's threats, partly due to Russia's growing menace.
The US's military budget now makes up some 62% of NATO's total defense spending and the Pentagon has assets and intelligence capabilities others still can't match.
This new crisis will again strengthen the resolve of European countries and Canada to bolster their own defenses and depend on themselves for their own security. But there's still that cold hard fact that the might of the US military matters – immensely.
His Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who calls himself a former supporter of the alliance, has also chimed in, suggesting that after this conflict concludes, there will need to be a re-examination of the relationship with NATO. However, it’s clear that President Biden’s administration is striving to ensure the stability of this alliance amidst Trump’s unpredictable threats.
As NATO leaders prepare for future discussions, they will need to navigate this challenging landscape to maintain the strength and unity of their coalition against emerging global threats.
