What is clear, however, is that Trump — who ostensibly spent four years as president of the United States — has little clue about what NATO is or what NATO does. And when he spoke on the subject at a rally in South Carolina over the weekend, what he said was less a cogent discussion of foreign policy than it was gibberish — the kind of outrageous nonsense that flows without interruption from an empty and unreflective mind.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’” Trump said, recalling an implausible conversation with an unnamed, presumably European head of state. “‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recounted responding. “‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”
The former president’s message was clear: If NATO members do not pay up, then he will leave them to the mercy of a continental aggressor who has already plunged one European country into death, destruction and devastation.
Except NATO isn’t a mafia protection racket. NATO, in case anyone needs to be reminded, is a mutual defense organization, formed by treaty in 1949 as tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union hardened into conflict. “The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all,” states Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
Based on discourse online post the invasion of Ukraine, it seems there’s a few Americans that don’t know what NATO is/does, nor how it differentiates from how the US conducts its military. For starters, it’s anti-militant—kind of the point—unless it has no other viable resort, and it’s the threat of that last resort that bolsters the passive-security within NATO. It is safety in numbers and it fails if the herd scatters.
As a result, Article 5 has only needed to be acted upon once and the irony is that it was the US that raised the call for help and the other nations responded.
If Trump has his way, WW3 will kick off, everyone will suffer, and it’ll end with the US saying, “Fucking hell. Wow. Let’s not let that happen again. We need some sort of agreement to make sure of that.”
Umm. Well. Are we including NATO-sponsored
invasionserr… peacekeeping conflict-resolution interventions?NATO doesn’t only operate in defense, there have been a long list of NATO-sponsored interventions outside NATO membership: Kuwait/Iraq, the Balkans, Libya. One can argue whether NATO operations were justified in those cases, but I don’t think any of them could be described as anti-militant, or that there were no other viable options. Doing nothing was an option, for example.
With Article 4, they will respond to threats with enough recourse to prevent it or provide aid and assistance for operations focused toward peace. The “threat” being one the collective nations of NATO agree that a member of NATO will not be able to handle alone, thus its security will be compromised, and that would lead to Article 5 being invoked when it could’ve been avoided earlier.
I’m not even saying that I disagree with the decision to intervene in Kuwait, but it was certainly militant, and NATO nations certainly had other “resorts” to insure their own security. I’m having trouble coming up with any argument that Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, for example, threatened the security of a NATO member.
I don’t think humans have that much self-awarneess anymore, I think Trump can literally kill 12 million people with his bare hands and most people will say “Aww shucks” aside from a vocal minority, with the media calling such actions “Divisive” at worst
Anti-militant is a terrible mischaracterization. NATO is existentially militant, it’s a super federation of militarized powers. What they are is a defensive pact. They don’t conquer territory, western powers have been out of that business since before the formation of the alliance.
Putin’s gambit that the herd might scatter is a really big bet for an empire that’s already over-extended trying to protect force onto territory that isn’t rightfully theirs. How long does he think he can keep paying off enough westerners to prevent a non-nato fraternal response?