Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump is miffed big time that when he called for allies to send soldiers and materiel to Iran, nobody was home. He clearly views allies in a lord/vassal situation. The lord tolerates the vassal and gives them a bit of independence, but when he gives them an order, they are expected to drop everything and comply immediately. They didn't. He said: "NATO just wasn't there." Of course, he never read the NATO charter. It says that an attack on one member is an attack on all members. That article has been invoked only once in NATO's history. That was after 9/11 and all the other countries did everything they could to help track down Osama bin Laden. Since the attacking country in the Iran war was—well, not Iran—the other members felt that no NATO member had been attacked, so they had no obligation to defend anyone. The treaty does NOT say: "Whenever a member chooses to attack some other country, all members will join in the fun." The only NATO country that has been threatened in decades is Denmark. And it was threatened by Trump, who wanted Greenland so he could hide the remaining Epstein files under a mile of ice.
This weekend, Trump said: "We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on NATO, hundreds, protecting them, and we would have always been there for them, but now, based on their actions, I guess we don't have to be." By now, all members fully understand that NATO is not there for them and they are busily starting to work on their own defense. That may be cheaper than Trump realizes, since both the Ukraine war and the Iran war have shown that having F-35s and giant aircraft carriers isn't so important in modern warfare. Drones, antitank rockets, surface-to-air missiles, interceptors, mines, and other cheap hardware may actually be enough to repel an invader. Playing defense is now much cheaper than playing offense.
Trump did and does have a point that NATO countries weren't pulling their own weight on defense spending. They got the message and almost all of them are ramping up their defense budgets. The NATO countries other than the U.S. are also quietly talking about security arrangements without the U.S. The biggest threat is Russia, but it has shown to be incapable of conquering even one medium-sized country. Its army is exhausted and its arsenal is depleted, so an attack on a NATO country in the next 2-3 years seems unlikely, by which time most of Europe may have made serious progress on defense. There is even talk of a European army, something that was never on the agenda before.
Trump is also annoyed with the U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer did offer two British aircraft carriers, but Trump considered the offer too little, too late. One thing Trump has toyed with doing is removing thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Europe. That would be an enormous move and would shock European countries into even faster action.
There is a NATO meeting scheduled for July. No one knows how that will go. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is putting in massive effort to butter up Trump. He understands that Trump can be easily manipulated by praise and is running the praise machine at 110%. It might work. (V)