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Long before President Donald J. Trump threatened over the weekend that he was going to let Russia do “whatever it wants” with NATO allies who don’t contribute enough to collective defense, European leaders were secretly warning that the world was in crisis. We were discussing how to prepare for the The United States would remove itself from the center of a 75-year-old alliance.
Barring his usual hyperbole at one of his campaign rallies on Saturday, Mr. Trump could now push the European debate into a more public stage.
Discussion in the European media so far has focused on whether the former president would withdraw the United States from NATO if he returns to office.
But the larger meaning of this comment is that it served as a warning and lesson to the 30 or so others about heeding Trump’s demands, prompting Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to take aim at NATO members. This means that they may be invited to do so.
His statement surprised many in Europe. It was especially shocking after three years in which President Biden repeatedly said the United States would “defend every inch of NATO territory” in an attempt to restore confidence in the alliance lost during Trump’s four years in office. Ta. ” White House press secretary Andrew Bates condemned Trump’s comments as “rambling,” but by Sunday morning, many of those who say Europe cannot rely on the United States to deter Russia It resonated with me.
Charles Michel, president of the European Council, which is made up of European heads of government and decides on common policy, wrote that “reckless statements” like Mr. Trump’s “can only serve President Putin’s interests.” He wrote that Europe is taking nascent efforts to “develop strategic autonomy and invest in defense” with greater urgency.
And in Berlin, Norbert Röttgen, a member of the German parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told social media platform should watch this #Trump video.” He further added, “Anything else would be surrender and abandonment of oneself.”
All these doubts are bound to dominate the NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Thursday and the Munich Security Conference, the annual gathering of national security leaders, on Friday. And it’s no mistake that Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will use the occasion to celebrate the NATO unity essential to keeping Ukraine an independent country two years after the Russian invasion. No, but whatever they say will almost certainly be met with backlash. There are questions about what the alliance will look like in a year’s time.
Indeed, a reassessment has been in the works for months, some European diplomats and defense officials say, but they only hint at it in public, if at all.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has begun talking about how Germany needs to prepare for the possibility of a decades-long conflict with Russia. Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that the alliance must prepare for “decades of conflict” with Russia.
“Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines the overall security of our country, including the United States, and puts American and European soldiers at further risk,” Stoltenberg said in a statement Sunday. Stated. He also reiterated a statement made by NATO members in 2016, adding: “No matter who wins the presidential election, we expect the United States to remain a strong and committed NATO ally.”
Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said that within three to five years Russia will “test” NATO’s unity by attacking one of its weaker members and that other members will not come to its defense. He said that there is a possibility that the United States may try to break up the alliance by showing “That is not an assessment of NATO in 2023,” he told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten last week, calling it “new information.”
At the heart of the ongoing debate in Europe is whether the alliance’s members can guarantee that the US nuclear umbrella, the ultimate deterrent against Russian aggression, will continue to cover the 31 members of the NATO alliance.
Britain and France have their own small nuclear arsenals. If, in the coming year, European NATO members begin to question the United States’ continued compliance with Article 5 of the NATO Treaty (an attack on one country is considered an attack on all), it will almost inevitably be The debate about who is who will be reignited. Other countries in Europe also wanted their own nuclear weapons, starting with Germany.
During the last Cold War, this discussion was very open in ways that may seem shocking today. Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, declared in 1957 that tactical nuclear weapons, such as the one Russia threatened to use in Ukraine, were “nothing more than a further development of artillery.” “Of course we can’t do without them,” he added. At the 1962 meeting, he added that the defense of Berlin “must be fought from the beginning with nuclear weapons.”
For six decades, the United States helped quell such sentiments by deploying nuclear weapons across Europe. They remain there to this day. But the value of that deterrence came into question after Trump publicly and privately urged his allies to withdraw from NATO in 2018.
At the time, Trump’s national security team, which included Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and two previous national security advisers, H.R. McMaster and John R. I scrambled to stop them from interfering with the fundamentals. Their concern was that American influence in Europe would be undermined and Russia would be emboldened.
Of course, that was all before the Ukraine war. Questions that seemed theoretical to Europeans – starting with whether Putin was prepared to take back land he believed rightfully belonged to Russia in the days of Peter the Great – are now vivid. , possibly looking life-threatening.
Current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week as he prepared to meet with Biden in Washington. “Russia’s victory in Ukraine will not only mean the end of Ukraine as a free, democratic and independent state, it will also dramatically change the face of Europe.” It will serve as a blueprint for spiritual leaders.
Scholz said in Washington that Germany is now Ukraine’s second-largest military donor, part of a European decision in recent weeks to provide $54 billion over the next four years to rebuild the country. emphasized.
This year, Germany will finally reach its goal of spending 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, a goal set for all NATO members, several years later than originally promised. At a time when it is unclear whether Republicans in Congress will continue to block additional aid, the commitments Europe has made to Ukraine exceed current commitments from the U.S. government.
Of course, Trump made no mention of any of this in his threatening remarks Saturday. Europe’s belated approach to this challenge does not fit into his campaign narrative.
But it will be the way he describes it as an encounter with the unknown president of a “great power” that will resonate in capitals across Europe.
During Trump’s talk, the leader asked, “So if we were attacked by Russia without paying, would you protect us?” And I remember Trump saying this. “No, I won’t protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You have to pay.”
The story, seen as unlikely in many European capitals, would cast NATO more as a protection racket than an alliance, 75 years after its founding.
And regardless of whether Trump wins in November, the fact that such a vision of NATO has taken root among a significant number of Americans means that the transatlantic alliance in Europe will be in jeopardy for years to come. It represents a change that will affect your perspective. .
Christopher F. Schuetze and Steven Erlanger Contribute to the report from Berlin, Matina Stevis-Gridnev From Brussels.
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