Connexion
The UK says it will campaign for NATO spending for all members to increase, pushing member states to contribute more to collective defence.
The post Echoing Trump UK Calls on NATO Allies to Boost Defence Spending, Announces Own Budget Increase appeared first on Breitbart.
As NATO celebrates its 75th anniversary, the U.S. should tell Europe it is on its own if it provokes a war with Russia.
NATO is celebrating its 75th year as its members fight a brutal proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. The alliance marked its anniversary in Brussels last week and will hold a formal summit in July in Washington.
That session could be contentious. Fears of a Ukrainian collapse are increasing, and an increasing number of policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic believe the alliance should go all in for Kiev, assuming away the risks of a broader conventional and potential nuclear war.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron played the Napoleon card, suggesting that allies deploy troops to Ukraine. While meeting with his European counterparts, he opined, “There’s no consensus today to send in an official, endorsed manner troops on the ground. But in terms of dynamics, nothing can be ruled out.” When criticized, he doubled down: “For us to decide today to be weak, to decide today that we would not respond, is being defeated already.”
Macron imagines that putting allied troops in Ukrainian cities would immunize the latter from attack, deterring Moscow without war. He drew support from officials in Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland. More serious governments, including the Biden administration, rejected the idea. After all, Americans would bear the principal burden and pay the greatest cost of a broader war.
Nevertheless, as Warsaw pointed out, some members already have deployed troops to Ukraine. Others are threatening to act on their own. Reported the Wall Street Journal: “Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico told a televised briefing that preparatory materials he had received for the summit sent shivers down his spine. The documents, he said, suggested that a number of NATO and EU countries were considering sending troops to Ukraine. Fico added: ‘I cannot say for what purpose and what they should be doing there’.” The author Edward Luttwak helpfully offered detailed military missions for the transatlantic alliance:
NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat. The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops—both small elite units and logistics and support personnel—who can remain far from the front. The latter could play an essential role by releasing their Ukrainians counterparts for retraining in combat roles. NATO units could also relieve Ukrainians currently tied up in the recovery and repair of damaged equipment, and could take over the technical parts of existing training programs for new recruits. These NATO soldiers might never see combat—but they don’t have to in order to help Ukraine make the most of its own scarce manpower.
Whether or not such personnel went mano-a-mano with Moscow’s troops, they would be actively involved in the war and thus valid targets. Given Russia’s extensive missile and drone attacks, allied casualties would be inevitable. In that event, Macron said, neither the U.S. nor NATO need be involved, but that is easier said now than done then, with bodies being shipped back to European nations and possibly America. An expanded conventional and possible nuclear war could scarcely be avoided.
Others freely advocate direct intervention in combat, though for nominally defensive purposes. For instance, retired Col. Alexander Crowther suggested sending personnel to run anti-missile batteries: “You’d have to be really clear to Putin [and] say, ‘We’re sending people to Ukraine, they’re not going to be doing offensive combat against you’.” Alas, Moscow isn’t likely to respect that distinction. Allied troops would be actively engaging Russian forces and could scarcely be ignored by Moscow. In that case, Crowther would be inviting massive retaliation.
Yet some European and American officials would go even further. They have urged deploying aerial and naval armadas to sweep the skies and seas of Russian forces, intervening more broadly “to decisively turn the military tide,” and even employing nuclear weapons against what they appear to perceive as the Mongols reborn. These would risk World War III, putting thousands and perhaps millions of lives in the balance. Proponents of such measures appear more than a little deranged.
Indeed, what ties such proposals together is that only Washington has sufficient power to overcome Moscow. NATO members which barely pretend to field a military are currently plotting how to effectively borrow U.S. forces. The very structure of the transatlantic alliance, treating all members as equals, encourages dangerous flights of fancy by ivory tower warriors across the continent. Consider the complaints of Eastern Europeans that they deserve to fill NATO’s top spot, the secretary generalship, for which the Netherlands’ former Prime Minister Mark Rutte is the strong favorite to replace retiring Jens Stoltenberg. Both Estonia’s prime minister and Romania’s president considered running. The former asked, “Are we equals or are we not equals? So these questions still remain.” Artis Pabriks, former defense minister of Latvia, complained that “we feel that we were not consulted enough.”
Estonia may be a lovely tourist destination, but with only 7,100 men and women under arms it is but a rounding error in any conflict with Russia. Tallinn shouldn’t oversee anything military in NATO, except maybe providing an honor guard for visiting dignitaries in Brussels. Latvia has even less credibility with just 6,600 people under arms. At least Romania, which fields a military of 69,900, is more serious.
In fact, few governments in Europe look good. The former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves asked of Rutte, “What moral credibility does this guy have?” Rotterdam has chronically failed to hit NATO’s two percent of GDP target. Moreover, the Netherlands fields fewer than half as many soldiers as Romania. Italy and Spain have sizable economies but risible militaries. Germany’s long-term commitment is uncertain at best.
Even the United Kingdom, with Europe’s best military, is not ready for war with Russia. London is shrinking its army as it trims plans to increase military outlays. Sky News’ Deborah Haynes observed that “the armed forces would run out of ammunition ‘in a few days’ if called upon to fight”; “the UK lacks the ability to defend its skies against the level of missile and drone strikes that Ukraine is enduring”; and “it would take five to 10 years for the army to be able to field a war-fighting division of some 25,000 to 30,000 troops backed by tanks, artillery and helicopters.”
Only slightly less reckless than entering the war are proposals to bring Ukraine into NATO—which most members have continued to reject despite the 2008 Bucharest declaration endorsing the inclusion of Kiev and Tbilisi. Indeed no one in NATO wanted to defend either country, so members lied for the next 14 years about their willingness to invite the two governments to join. Alas, having previously been misled about NATO expansion, Moscow took the prospect seriously, which ultimately animated Vladimir Putin’s invasion decision. Even then the alliance wasn’t prepared for nuclear war over Ukraine and stayed out. Nor are most members prepared for such a conflict today, despite the increasing attempt by Eastern Europeans to drag America into the war.
Yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken continues to encourage Ukraine while refusing to act, declaring: “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.” But if Kiev isn’t worth risking mass casualties and destruction today, it won’t be worth doing so tomorrow. With some Europeans nevertheless pushing to deploy troops to Ukraine and risk war with Russia, Washington should tell Europe to put up or shut up.
Vladimir Putin’s government is responsible for invading Ukraine. For that Moscow bears responsibility for mass death and destruction. Nevertheless, the U.S. and European states did much to encourage the conflict and share blame for the resulting horror.
That makes it even more important for the allies to step back from the abyss. Washington long ago recognized that Ukraine matters little for America’s defense. Kiev spent most of US history as part of the Russian empire in one form or another. Washington never considered going to war over who ruled Kiev. It should not do so now.
The Biden administration should make very clear that if European meddling in Ukraine leads to war, America’s allies are on their own, NATO notwithstanding. There is no alliance obligation to rescue those joining someone else’s fight. Washington also should forthrightly reject Kiev’s NATO aspirations. No one has a right to join. Alliances are supposed to increase security. Accepting a country at war with Russia would yield conflict not peace.
Instead of prolonging the Russo-Ukraine war, Washington and its allies should work to bring hostilities to a close. Doing so won’t be easy, but the ongoing proxy war risks expansion and escalation. Ukraine is not worth that risk. To properly celebrate NATO’s 75th anniversary, the Biden administration should end today’s proxy war.
The post If Europe Pushes Putin, America Should Tap Out appeared first on The American Conservative.
The Russian bordering Nordic nation of Norway announced the most significant change in its defence in modern times.
The post ‘More of Everything’: Norway Wants to Double Its Defence Budget appeared first on Breitbart.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, reiterated that Ukraine will one day join NATO. It is a meaningless, almost theological gesture—practically pagan hymn-chanting at this point. Blinken knows his promise to be untrue. European allies know it to be untrue. The majority of Americans either don’t care about Ukraine or are actively opposed to further engagement in Europe. The Republicans are a changed party, as evident from thunderous responses from Republican senators. Ohio’s Senator J.D. Vance tweeted, “This is completely irresponsible. Ukraine should not join NATO, and to invite them during a war is to invite our nation into war. Do you want American ground troops in Ukraine? If not, we must push back against the idea that Ukraine should join NATO.” Senator Lee echoed the sentiment, tweeting (with a link to an op-ed published in these pages), “NATO can have Ukraine. Or the U.S. But not both.”
It is, of course, deeply cynical to dangle the NATO carrot in front of Ukraine especially, when NATO did not let them join after the Bucharest summit and will not in future. The argument goes that NATO members will welcome Ukraine only once they have solved their existing security issue, i.e. join a defensive alliance when the need for defense is over. To any sane person, that sounds absurd—that would mean the security issue will not be solved in this lifetime, and it will continue to be a frozen conflict. Russia has no incentive to end the simmering conflict in Ukraine unless Ukrainian neutrality is legally guaranteed, and will continue to bleed Ukraine dry until there are no men left to fight.
To argue against unlimited expansion of NATO and the EU goes against liberal theology and the current raison d’etre for both the organizations. To say openly that there will be no expansion and the club will remain closed, because (despite weakness) Russia is a major power and Russian tacit veto in her backyard matters, will be tantamount to admitting that norms are nonsense, the world is anarchical, realism is still the best path to equilibrium and great power peace, history hasn’t ended, and only great powers matter in foreign policy—which is to say, all is as it has always been.
To admit that publicly is verboten, regardless of how true it is. Hence all this incoherence from an administration that argues that the U.S. will not send troops to Ukraine and start a third world war, while arguing that the U.S. will be treaty bound to defend Ukraine someday and risk a third world war. It makes no sense, but such is the current grand strategy of the preeminent great power of the world.
Naturally, this nonsense is purely for domestic consumption. Yet the result is a continuation of false hope for Ukraine and Georgia, one that may lead to their extinction as states. There will not be any NATO cavalry over the hills (although not for lack of trying by some). The best we can do is seek a compromise making Ukraine and Georgia neutral buffers, similar to Austria during the Cold War. But for that, Washington needs bolder leadership to admit some hard truths and render some strategic coherence.
The post Antony Blinken Plays Politics with Ukraine’s NATO Membership appeared first on The American Conservative.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has ruled out Western troops being sent into Ukraine in favor of extracting more financial support from U.S. Congress.
The post David Cameron Says No Boots on the Ground in Ukraine, Aims for ‘Money out of Congress’ Instead appeared first on Breitbart.
NATO leaders have already said that while they want Ukraine to join, it doesn't meet eligibility -- including not being at at war and occupied.
The post Ukraine Will Join NATO, Says Antony Blinken appeared first on Breitbart.
Ukraine has cemented yet another 'NATO-lite' deal with an alliance member, inking a ten-year agreement with Finland.
The post ‘NATO Lite’: Finland is Latest Member to Sign 10-Year Defence Deal With Ukraine appeared first on Breitbart.
Over three decades after the end of the Cold War, the alliance encourages perverse and dangerous behaviors in its member states.
Seventy-five years ago, on April 4, 1949, the foreign ministers of 12 European and North American countries convened in Washington and signed the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.
With war raging in Eastern Europe and calls from a number of NATO allies to escalate that war, unpopular yet critical questions need to be addressed with regard to the alliance’s history, its continuation, and its expansion, as well as its ramifications for U.S. national security. Indeed, several articles of faith with regard to NATO’s successes and indispensability turn out to be, upon even cursory examination, highly questionable—if not entirely mistaken.
While criticism of the alliance is effectively verboten in today’s Washington, at the time of its founding, some eminent American foreign policy thinkers such as Walter Lippmann warned that “a great power like the United States gains no advantages and it loses prestige by offering, indeed, peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get.”
An argument could be made that by the end of its first decade, NATO was already obsolete. The great Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs has argued that, by the mid-1950s, the Soviets (post-Stalin, post-Beria) were beating a retreat from the center of Europe. In 1954–55, they agreed to, in Lukacs’s words, a “reciprocal withdrawal” in Austria, paving that way for that country’s Cold War neutrality. Within a year the Soviets relinquished their naval base in Finland (which henceforth was to also pursue neutral status—that is, until last year) and mended ties with Tito’s Yugoslavia. By Lukacs’s accounting, 1956 “was the turning point of the cold war. Perhaps even the end of it, if by ‘cold war’ means the direct prospect of an actual war between American and Russian armed forces in Europe.”
In the absence of the competing alliance systems, the Cold War might have come to a denouement decades earlier. Certainly Turkey’s incorporation into the alliance in 1952 and the subsequent decision to place nuclear-armed Jupiter missiles there did little to further peace and stability between East and West. Indeed, it did help set the stage for the nuclear missile crisis of October 1962.
Nevertheless, the decision to carry on and indeed expand the alliance was made within a mere 24 months of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. For Clinton, the impetus to expand came from domestic politics rather than the requirements of US national security.
As Ambassador Jack Matlock has recently noted,
The real reason that Clinton went for it [NATO expansion] was domestic politics. I testified in Congress against NATO expansion, saying that it would be a great “mistake”; when I came out of that testimony, a couple of people who were observing said, “Jack, why are you fighting against this?”And I said, “Because I think it’s a bad idea.” They said, “Look, Clinton wants to get reelected. He needs Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois….”
As many at the time knew, the project was fraught with risk. But in the Washington, DC of thirty years ago, one could have an actual debate on the merits of one or another foreign policies without being labeled a foreign “dupe” or a Russian “apologist.” In those years, scores of members of the Washington establishment, not least Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and John Warner, made their objections to the expansionist project known.
One group of objectors was led by the granddaughter of President Dwight Eisenhower. In 1997, the estimable Susan Eisenhower published an open letter in an effort to persuade Clinton to reconsider his chosen course. Calling NATO expansion a “policy error of historic proportions,” the letter’s 50 signatories, including longtime hawks Paul Nitze and Richard Pipes, the prominent Democratic Senators Bill Bradley and Sam Nunn, and intellectuals like David Calleo and Owen Harries, warned that,
In Russia, NATO expansion, which continues to be opposed across the entire political spectrum, will strengthen the nondemocratic opposition, undercut those who favor reform and cooperation with the West, bring the Russians to question the entire post-Cold War settlement.
At around the same time, an article by the World Policy Institute’s Sherle Schwenninger noted,
NATO expansion threatens to create tensions and conflicts in the heart of Central and Eastern Europe that would otherwise not exist…The Clinton Administration justifies NATO enlargement in part as an effort to avoid a new security vacuum in Central Europe, but even as it removes some countries from East-West competition it only increases the potential intensity of the rivalry over others, like the Baltic states and Ukraine.
As those of us who were lucky enough to know and work with him knew, Sherle had a special prescience, and his warnings then were no exception.
Today, NATO’s defenders will no doubt ask: Surely after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO is needed more than ever to keep Europe safe from the Russian bear?
Not really.
First, as the distinguished political scientist John Mearsheimer and others have tirelessly pointed out, there is scant evidence that Putin wants all of Ukraine, much less more real estate in Eastern Europe. Do we really suppose Russia wants to take on the burden of supporting three-quarters of a million Polish pensioners? Or waste more blood and treasure in what most certainly would be fierce guerrilla resistance in Galicia? The fact is that Russia lacks both the means and the will to establish political, economic, and territorial hegemony on the continent. Arguments to the contrary are, to be polite about it, based on a misunderstanding of Russian national security aims. The French political philosopher Emmanuel Todd (less polite) believes that the idea that Russia has Europe in its sights is the stuff of “fantasy and propaganda.”
“The truth is that Russia,” as Todd writes in his new book La Dafaite de la Occident (The Defeat of the West), “with a shrinking population and a territory of 17 million square kilometers, far from wanting to conquer new territories, wonders above all how she will continue to occupy those she already possesses.”
So, let’s call NATO what it is: an unnecessary alliance which poses a danger to the true national security interest of the United States. NATO encourages free-riding on the part of our partners; it encourages recklessness on the part of strategically insignificant though wildly bellicose client states; it encourages incredibly self-defeating behavior on the part of those nations that want to join it; it encourages and helps enable the U.S. to meddle in the Middle Eastern and North Africa where we have virtually no business being.
The show has been on the road for far too long. Surely, 75 years of NATO is enough—and eight decades after the end of the Second World War, it is a long past time for Europe to stand on its own.
The post At 75, Has NATO Outlived Its Use? appeared first on The American Conservative.
That won’t stop those who believe in priorities from being dubbed “unpatriotic conservatives” anew.
Longtime readers of The American Conservative are no stranger to making common cause with people on the left when necessary. The effort to forestall decades of disaster in Iraq may have failed, but it was not TAC alone in that defeat; the magazine’s editors were dubbed “unpatriotic conservatives” not only because they were antiwar and David Frum loved the war, but explicitly because in seeking to avert a debacle they had made “common cause with the left-wing…movements.” So doing, it was suggested, and is still suggested, violated a friend–enemy distinction that placed them outside the political bounds of, if not the country, at least the conservative movement. The war party dismissed appeals to prudence and constraints, conflating resistance to the war with terrorist sympathies.
Today, you can be a patriotic conservative and agree with Democrats, apparently, but only if it is about Trump—not about liberal overreach. The war party still resists the prudential recognition of limited resources, and its right wing will find such recognition all the more difficult when it entails agreement with members of the traditional left. But the national political distinction that matters in our moment is between those who put the interests of American citizens and their posterity first and those who don’t, often hiding behind gestures toward an abstract idea of America. This is a distinction that cuts across conventional affiliations, leaving both parties in upheaval, as the Democrats become the party most comfortable with liberal internationalism and the global financial elite. Everyone should be prepared, going forward, to find perhaps temporary allies of convenience to both his right and left.
For those who seek to put America first, NATO reform presents a new risk of being associated with people neoconservatives will dismiss as leftists. So be it. A recent essay in Foreign Affairs by Max Bergmann, currently of the Center for Strategic and International Studies but formerly of the Center for American Progress, argues for a “more European NATO.” His call pairs nicely with what Sumantra Maitra, my colleague both here at TAC and at the Center for Renewing America, calls a “dormant NATO” strategy for the United States, something Bergmann acknowledges negatively, framing his case as a matter of insurance against such policies.
Nevertheless, the two perspectives are harmonious. In a time of limited resources, and thus ruthless prioritization, American policymakers must focus on managing our relationship with China and responding to China’s relationship with the rest of the world. If, as Bergmann suggests and Maitra has proposed, Europe can fulfill the core purposes of NATO without America as principal, then embracing that reality gives U.S. policymakers one less distraction. The benefits are not one-sided in the long term. Bergmann writes that the main problem facing Europe collectively “lies with NATO’s overdependence on the United States.”
In a world where even President Biden’s Democrat administration is preoccupied with the situation in the West Pacific, this is an obvious vulnerability for martially atrophied European member states. The traditional major threat to U.S. grand strategy is the emergence of a hegemonic power that dominates the Eurasian landmass and thus, surpassing the United States in material and cultural resources, can afford to strike North America across the oceans. The reality now of the global political and economic situation is such that this threat slouches not toward Europe, as it did in the 20th century’s conflicts with Germany and Russia, but instead moves its slow thighs in Asia. American focus is turning, if still in starts and stops.
Thus NATO should be, or will be by events, demoted from a critical global institution to a vital regional one. As Bergmann writes, “After decades of drift, the alliance has found new purpose in deterring Russian aggression, its original raison d’etre,” and the European members of the alliance are capable of such deterrence largely without the United States. Bergmann acknowledges that “when Americans travel to Europe, they see sophisticated infrastructure and citizens who enjoy high standards of living and robust social safety nets.”
Being one of those rare professional liberals with enough imagination to model a normal person’s thoughts, he adds, “They cannot understand why their tax dollars and soldiers are needed to defend a well-off continent whose total population far outstrips that of the United States.”
This highlights, however, a peculiar pretense in discussions of NATO’s future. What Bergmann passes over as “decades of drift” have also been decades of enthusiastic enumeration of new responsibilities for the alliance, as it transformed itself from a straightforward defensive arrangement into a full-suite security organization executing military interventions far outside the European theater, let alone the North Atlantic. For decades, NATO has been looking for things to do, and finding some. So when officials outraged by the dormant NATO proposal claim there is nothing to scale down, nothing for America to decline to participate in, that the alliance is just what it has always been, there should be some outrage in return.
In fact, the alliance has evolved, so it can evolve further. Defenders of a smaller role for the United States will have to be prepared, however, just like defenders of the status quo, to set aside compunctions about agreeing with members of “the other team.” As NATO has become so much more than for keeping Russia out, it has not ceased from also being, in Lord Ismay’s famous words, for keeping “the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Conservative interventionists will resist a European-led or dormant NATO with invocations of future war on the continent; reliance on American firepower, they say, is the only thing keeping member states off each other’s throats. In making this argument, they will probably have the support of both small states concerned at the prospect of further dependence on France and Germany and a European left happy to keep the defense burden squarely on American shoulders.
Meanwhile, a coalition for making American troops the backstop of last resort, rather than the backbone of forward defense, will be no less offensive to American prejudices. France may be our oldest ally, but after two World Wars, bickering with Charles De Gaulle, and observation of the country’s creative riot and vacation schedule, her reputation with American conservatives is the stuff of jokes. That reflects the shortness of U.S. memories far more than France’s civilizational status, and will need to be overcome. France has always wanted to play a larger role in NATO, repeatedly snubbed by the Anglo-American special relationship. A French-German-British triumvirate backing up the alliance’s Eastern border states would work as well at preserving peace for the foreseeable future as the current imbalanced consulship.
Foreign policy does not fit tidily within domestic partisan divides, because it deals with delimiting that domestic area. It is too large. Like immigration policy, it conditions these other debates, creating what I have described before as a political order of operations. At the beginning of this column, I defined our new disruptive national political distinction in domestic terms, but I conclude now with the distinction that divides foreign policy, because it is the distinction that bounds other debates. The defining division in American foreign policy today is over the status of unipolarity.
No one denies that, after 1989, the U.S. experienced a period of hyperpower; the question is whether three decades of bipartisan liberal hubris at the end of history undermined that hegemony beyond repair. Committed liberal internationalists believe unipolarity can be salvaged, that America needs only assert herself on the battlefield and further entrench in the multilateral institutions of the last century. They still think in the Cold War terms of “hawks” and “doves,” and accuse those who have come to terms with reality—an increasingly bipolar global order and a multipolar future—of inviting and even ushering in these conditions. (Never mind who has been at the controls for the last 30 years). The advocates of making the best hard choices can be sure they will still be called “unpatriotic conservatives.”
The post ‘Dormant NATO’ Is the Best Hard Choice appeared first on The American Conservative.
Russia launched its third massive missile attack on Ukraine in the past four days, and the second to target the capital of Kyiv.
The post Russia Bombards Ukraine With Fresh Wave of Missile Strikes, With One Passing Through Polish Airspace appeared first on Breitbart.
European discussions about sending troops obscures the fact that several NATO countries already have boots on the ground.
The war in Ukraine has reached that long-feared fork in the road. Ukraine is losing the war, and no amount of arms or aid is going to change that. The West has to either accept that assessment and nudge Ukraine to the negotiating table or send more than arms and aid. It is going to have to escalate its support and send troops, risking direct confrontation with Russia and the disaster scenario it has tried to avoid since the first days of the war.
This realization has sparked a bitter debate in Europe. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said on February 26 that “a number of NATO and EU member states are considering that they will send their troops to Ukraine on a bilateral basis.” That same day, the French President Emmanuel Macron said that, though “there is no consensus today to send troops on the ground in an official, accepted, and endorsed manner…no option should be discarded.”
Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz shot back that the consensus was “that there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil who are sent there by European states or NATO states.” Germany, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg all said there was no plan to send troops to Ukraine.
Macron replied that the time has come for a “Europe where it will be appropriate not to be a coward.” The German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that “talk about boots on the ground or having more courage or less courage…does not really help solve the issues we have when it comes to helping Ukraine.”
The debate over sending NATO troops to Ukraine may be masking the need for more immediate debate about NATO troops already on the ground in Ukraine.
The transcript of an intercepted February 19 conversation between senior German air force officials discussing the possible transfer of German Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine says that the Germans “know how the English do it…. They have several people on-site.” The revelation that the UK has troops on the ground has now been confirmed by the British Prime Minister’s office: “Beyond the small number of personnel we do have in the country supporting the armed forces of Ukraine, we haven’t got any plans for large-scale deployment.”
The transcript says that “the French don’t do it that way,” but Scholz has hinted that they do. On February 26, the German Chancellor defended his decision not to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine by saying that it would require the presence of Germans in Ukraine to match their British and French counterparts. He explained, “What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can’t be done in Germany.” He worried that “a participation in the war could emerge from what we do.”
The transcript also cryptically alludes to an American presence on the ground. Wondering whether Ukraine would be able to do targeting on their own, one of the officials says, “It’s known that there are numerous people there in civilian attire who speak with an American accent.”
And there are numerous American civilian officers in Ukraine. On February 26, a New York Times report revealed in greater detail than ever before the extent of CIA involvement on the ground in Ukraine. In the days before the war began, U.S. personnel were evacuated from Ukraine—except for a small group of CIA officers whom CIA Director William Burns ordered be left behind, and the “scores of new officers” who were sent in “to help the Ukrainians.” They helped them by passing on critical information, “including where Russia was planning strikes and which weapons systems they would use.” The CIA officers provided “intelligence for targeted missile strikes.” And they provided “intelligence support for lethal operations against Russian forces on Ukrainian soil.”
These recent intercepts and reports suggest that the U.S., UK, and France already have troops or operatives on the ground in Ukraine. Russia has long claimed the presence of a large number of Polish fighters in Ukraine.
Other NATO countries appear open to such direct involvement. Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that “everything” is on the table when it comes to helping Ukraine, that “I think it is also the signals that we are sending to Russia, that we are not ruling out different things.” Referring to Macron’s comments that sending troops to Ukraine should be an option that is not discarded, the Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis agreed that “nothing can be taken off the table, no option can be rejected out of hand,” adding that “I very much welcome and encourage the discussion that has started.”
And other NATO countries are considering sending troops to Ukraine in noncombatant roles. The Czech President Petr Pavel says that Ukraine’s Western partners should “not limit ourselves where we don’t have to,” including potentially sending troops for “non-combat engagement” like training missions.
Canada’s Defense Minister Bill Blair says that Canada already has a small military presence in Ukraine to protect diplomatic staff (though it had been reported that Canada evacuated its diplomats at the start of the war). He says that Canada has “no plans to deploy combat troops” to Ukraine, but that some Canadian training of Ukrainian troops has been “challenging because it’s difficult to get people out of Ukraine to do the training.” So, he says, there was “discussions that, could we do it more efficiently, and is it possible to do it in Ukraine?”
The West has arrived at a fearful dilemma. Doubling down and sending troops to fight in Ukraine is a dangerous option that could lead to direct confrontation with Russia and an unthinkable war. But it is not the only road that can be taken. The West can also turn off the path of war that has benefitted no one, not send troops to Ukraine and, instead, explore the diplomatic road.
The post What NATO Country Doesn’t Have Troops in Ukraine? appeared first on The American Conservative.
A treaty commitment to Ukraine is a dangerous liability with no upside.
Marking the second anniversary of the war in Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg proclaimed that “Ukraine will join NATO…. It is not a question of if, but when.” Fortunately for the United States, the admission of Ukraine into NATO cannot be forced upon us by the unilateral dicta of global elites. Nevertheless, Stoltenberg’s shocking display of hubris and blatant disregard for sovereignty reminds us exactly why a nation should not be added to the NATO alliance without weighing the risks.
Historically, decisions to expand the alliance in the backyard of a nuclear-armed adversary is a dangerous game of chicken. Despite what the Biden administration and the foreign policy establishment would claim, Russia’s decision to pursue military objectives in Ukraine was due in large part to the prospect of further NATO expansion for both Ukraine and Georgia, a redline that Vladimir Putin drew as far back as 2008. Rather than taking such warnings seriously, the U.S. and European capitals continued to beat the drum of expansion by touting the foolish desires of the “rules-based international order” above realism. Western allies have gone so far as to keep the option of allied troops deploying into Ukraine on the table. Believing the Kremlin will simply accept such provocations is folly.
Although its recent behavior would suggest otherwise, NATO is not a social club. At its inception, NATO is a military alliance rooted in shared security interests in the transatlantic area of responsibility. NATO is not a catch-all, feel-good get-together of democratically inclined nations. Admittance is not a stamp of global approval or a reward for good behavior—a framework antithetical to a military alliance. In fact, at this point, the alliance neither needs nor should seek additional members to achieve its stated “defensive” aims. We should consider new members only when they bring demonstrable and credible hard power, promote greater burden sharing across existing member states, and conceivably reduce the chances of sending allied troops into war. This is the only standard by which collective defense may work.
Ukraine is incompatible as a member on all fronts. What strategic value would Ukraine bring to the alliance? But for the goodwill of international donors, Ukraine would still be operating with Soviet-era weaponry and bygone military doctrine.
So much for credible hard power or meaningful burden sharing.
The entire premise undergirding NATO is that when you are under attack and your resources and capacity run low, your allies come to your aid. An ally wholly dependent on others for training, equipment, and financing is hardly an ally. As for lowering the specter of conflict, admitting Ukraine—a country of historical and strategic significance to its nuclear superpower neighbor—seems nothing less than a gamble with the lives and treasures of the alliance’s members.
Somewhere along the way, our leaders talked themselves into thinking of Ukraine as a de facto member of the alliance, despite no vote being held or change in treaty ratified. Our leaders looked Russia’s red line in the face and stepped right over it, gambling with our own security against a nuclear-capable adversary. This mistake has drained American taxpayers of $113 billion to date, with war hawks in Congress currently fighting to send another $60 billion.
Putin continues to warn us that Ukraine in NATO could be the match that sparks WWIII. As a constitutional realist, it seems to me that when the enemy gives us a clear warning, we should act with a degree of prudence, not double down without a second thought simply to anger the bad guy.
If Ukraine is in NATO, the United States should be out, plain and simple.
A decision that could trigger the next world war cannot be made by transnational elites, unaccountable to any country or its citizens. As the body tasked with providing advice and consent on additions to the North Atlantic Treaty, the road to Ukraine’s NATO membership runs through the U.S. Senate. If we are serious about preserving U.S. hegemony, at no point can our nation be forced by a dependent Europe to accept the risk of nuclear escalation. We must draw a redline with NATO: You can have Ukraine or the United States. If allied boots hit the ground in Ukraine, we should walk away from NATO entirely.
In the meantime, perhaps someone should remind Jens Stoltenberg that his job is to be a steward of the strategic interests of NATO’s dues-paying members, not a shill for Ukraine. As the largest financial backer of the alliance, it is time the U.S. prioritizes participation in NATO according to our core strategic interests. WWIII is not on the agenda, and it is far past time for the United States to close NATO’s open door.
This op-ed has been updated to reflect the current debate over NATO troops entering Ukraine.
The post NATO Can Have Ukraine or the USA—Not Both appeared first on The American Conservative.
Leading the Ukrainians down the garden path does nothing to foster peace in Eastern Europe.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron once preached about the dangers of humiliating Russia in its war in Ukraine. Now he’s trying to cement himself as Europe’s preeminent Russia hawk. During a recent 20-country meeting in Paris that aimed to consolidate the West’s support for Kiev, Macron generated headlines by suggesting that European troop deployments to Ukraine shouldn’t be ruled out. He doubled down about a week later, emphasizing that Ukraine’s allies in Ukraine couldn’t afford to be “cowardly” in the face of Russian aggression.
Macron’s initial comments caused a firestorm in Europe. For many, the French president’s proposition was a non-starter. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, rejected the idea. Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholtz stated bluntly that “there will be no ground troops, no soldiers on Ukrainian soil” from NATO or the European Union. The Biden administration reiterated that there are no plans to deploy the U.S. military to Ukraine.
The aspiring leader of Europe wanted to send Russian President Vladimir Putin a message of strength: A Ukrainian victory is of such strategic importance that the West will do whatever is necessary to achieve it. But in reality, Macron and the pushback he received inadvertently delivered the opposite: Ukraine’s success isn’t so important to the West after all, particularly if it could bring the U.S. and Europe into a direct conflict with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear weapons power. The entire kerfuffle demonstrates just how hollow NATO’s perpetual open-door policy to Ukraine is, and why it’s far past time to bolt the door shut.
Ukraine has long viewed NATO membership as a top foreign policy priority. Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky pressed the matter with the Biden administration. Once the war kicked off, NATO membership was more urgent for the Ukrainians; in September 2022, Zelensky formally submitted an application to NATO, and the alliance agreed to accelerate what is typically a years-long review process. Kiev’s campaign has persisted ever since, a journey which has no doubt been frustrating for Zelensky. During the 2023 NATO heads-of-state summit, Zelensky went so far as to lash out at the Alliance’s reluctance in giving Ukraine a firm entry date.
It’s easy to see why Zelensky was upset. True or not, he remains convinced that Putin wouldn’t have dared launch his invasion if Ukraine had already been under the NATO umbrella, which includes a military superpower and three nuclear states. Zelensky also believes that NATO is Kiev’s best deterrent to another Russian attack in the future. You can’t fault the Ukrainian president for any of this.
The United States and its NATO allies, however, can and should be faulted for keeping the possibility of membership on life support for so long. Washington and Brussels have treated Ukraine like a hamster on a wheel. The carrot of NATO membership has dangled in front of Kiev, seemingly in view but in reality out of reach. Instead of being honest with Ukraine—the West has no desire whatsoever to get into a war with Russia on Ukraine’s behalf—it chooses to keep Ukraine’s hopes alive through a combination of rhetorical gymnastics, hand-holding, and virtue signaling.
While NATO members, both individually and through the alliance, are undoubtedly Ukraine’s biggest military backers, the last two years of war have shown that this support has strict limits. The Biden administration has reiterated on countless occasions that U.S. weapons sent to Ukraine must not be used against Russian targets on Russian soil; quickly dismissed calls for a No Fly Zone over Ukraine early on in the conflict, lest U.S. and Russian fighter pilots begin shooting at one another; stressed that a direct clash between U.S. and Russian forces will be avoided to the maximum extent; and modified the pace of weapons deliveries to Kyiv to decrease the probability of Russian escalation. Washington isn’t alone. Germany’s government continues to withhold the long-range Taurus cruise missile from Kiev over escalation concerns—a position backed by the Bundestag.
Ukraine, of course, isn’t a NATO member, so the Alliance has no obligation to defend it. But given NATO’s refusal to enter the war directly today, where combat with Russia would be deadly and immediate, it’s difficult to see why Putin would believe NATO would do so if Ukraine was brought into the alliance after the war was over. NATO membership entails serious, consequential commitments to those countries in the club, up to and including a willingness to escalate to the nuclear level—and fight a nuclear war—in order to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its members. Can we say with enough certainty that the U.S., Germany, the United Kingdom, and France would risk their own national security to save Kiev? And knowing the lengths to which NATO has gone to avoid a clash with Russia, would Putin find such a threat credible in the first place?
Deterrence isn’t magic. It needs to be backed up by sufficient military capabilities, seriousness of purpose, and an assurance that NATO’s full weight will be brought to bear on an adversary if absolutely necessary. If any of these ingredients are missing, then deterrence will fail. Macron’s remarks, and the uproar it caused, only adds further doubt in Putin’s mind that any NATO defense guarantee to Ukraine would be credible.
If NATO is unwilling to fight for Ukraine today, it’s unlikely it will be willing to do so tomorrow. Putin knows that. Closing NATO’s open door will ensure that Ukraine does too.
The post NATO Should Be Honest With Kiev appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: If anointed, the Netherlands’ politician will triple down on the status quo.
It appears that the quintessential tall, frugal, and stoic (albeit scandal-ridden) Dutchman, the former Dutch PM Mark Rutte, is on course to be the next NATO secretary general. Rutte apparently has gained the support of Joe Biden, and, in the arcane games of NATO bureaucracy, the tacit approval, if not the active support, of NATO’s hegemon and largest spender matters. Think of an executive board where one person or entity spends more for the organization than the rest of the board members combined and you’ll get the idea.
Rutte is an interesting character, sort of a 19th-century Dutchman of the northern Yankee mold. Think of the Vanderbilts. His opponents obviously criticize the Netherlands defense spending. In 2014, the Hague spent 1.15 percent of its GDP on defense. In 2023, that increased to a whopping 1.7 percent. But Rutte is best (or most infamously) known for his opposition to unionizing European spending during the economic crisis in Greece. A strong advocate for austerity and protestant frugality and self-sufficiency—again, par for the course—Rutte, as David Cameron said, “was the future once” of European conservatism. He rides bicycles in the capital. He is close to French President Emmanuel Macron, and talks a big game about European autonomy. But he understands geopolitics better than his American counterparts do, and he rightly sees no threat of a Russian tank brigade gamboling through the Dutch meadows anytime soon.
His prime opponent for the job was Kaja Kallas, the firebrand prime minister of Estonia and daughter of Siim Kallas, a scion of the Baltics’ former communist royalty. Estonia spends over 3 percent of its GDP on defense, and the Balts constantly mention that. They do have a point. West Europe wants to buck-pass its security burden to the U.S., just as much as East Europe wants to chain-gang the U.S. to its ethnic wars. What is not often mentioned is that Estonia’s GDP is around $39 billion, compared to around $1 trillion for the Dutch.
It is unlikely that there will be much change in Western European defense spendings as a result of Rutte’s installation. That is by design of the current security arrangement. As long as Western Europe is guarded by American men and armor placed to its east, the Europeans see no need to spend more. President Trump was correct in his instinct to remove troops from Germany, but undermined his purpose by planning to place them in Poland and removing Germany and the Netherlands’ incentive to spend more.
Rutte obviously understands the difference, just as he understood the spending habits of the Southern Europeans compared to the Northerners. Once again, the structure of the entity (the EU or NATO) makes it impossible to have a mutually beneficial compromise due to differences in spending cultures, interests, and threat perceptions. The only way to reverse that, at least towards the benefit of the United States, would be a whole new security arrangement; let’s just call it a sleeping, no, dormant NATO, where the American armor and infantry are not on the European continent. Only the American naval and nuclear umbrella would loom over the continental landmass and seaways, with the rest of the security burden squarely on the shoulders of the rich Western Europeans. But that is a separate conversation to have.
The reality is, that if this news is true, then President Biden, for all his deteriorating cognitive ability, has made an interesting calculation here by tacitly backing old Europe to lead the continent, rather than the ex-communist East. It is a power play, a signal to the East to pipe down. To have a NATO sec-gen like Kaja Kallas, or worse, like Chrystia Freeland from Canada, would have invariably resulted in more confrontation with Russia. Their rhetoric is apocalyptically binary and manichaean. It would be like having Hillary Clinton as POTUS.
Rutte will of course talk a big game, but will ultimately consider ad stabilitatem as his motto. His instinct is similar to the Dutch bankers during the times of Medici, or the Utrecht guilds during the Renaissance: financial frugality, profit, and social stability and equilibrium above all. In a weird way, this was a very conservative choice. We could do a lot worse.
The post Why We Should Be Alarmed at Mark Rutte for NATO Secretary-General appeared first on The American Conservative.
Trump’s rhetoric is unvarnished. He’s still right.
They just can’t take a joke. The former president Donald Trump made a sarcastic crack about encouraging Russia to attack NATO members that didn’t invest in their defense, and hysteria enveloped both Washington and Brussels. For some officials, the imbroglio appeared to signal the end of Western civilization.
Even worse, Europeans realized that they might have to do more for themselves militarily. The continent’s policymakers have begun thinking the unthinkable. Reported the New York Times, “European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the 75-year-old alliance.” What is the world coming to if European governments can no longer cheap-ride the U.S.? The horror!
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred European governments to spend more. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said 18 of 31 members will meet the alliance’s two percent of GDP standard this year, three times the number in 2016.
Trump’s comment should accelerate this process, probably more than all the complaining, whining, and demanding of prior presidents combined. He claimed that the leader of an unidentified large European country asked if Trump would send in the American cavalry if that nation failed to meet its NATO obligations. Trump responded: “I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’… ‘No I would not protect you. In fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You gotta pay.’”
No serious person should take Trump’s comments as a formal policy statement. Rather, it sounds like a witty riposte to a whiny Eurocrat seeking to justify his or her government’s irresponsible refusal to fulfill a state’s most fundamental duty, protecting its citizens. What American angered by decades of European cheap-riding did not secretly cheer Trump’s statement, especially when a febrile gaggle of European officials responded by wailing that Uncle Sam might stop playing Uncle Sucker?
One of the more stunning admissions came from the usual unidentified source, in this case an anonymous European diplomat speaking to Fox News: “When Trump came along, it woke us up to the fact that the U.S. might not always act in European interest, especially if it goes against American interest.” That was quite the admission, as the source granted: “It sounds naive saying it out loud, but that was the assumption a lot of people made.”
Imagine! The problem is not that Europeans gloried in getting American officials to put Europe first—that is to be expected. Rather, the outrage is that American officials did so. And apparently did so routinely, without the slightest sense of shame. It took the undiplomatic, untutored, potty-mouthed Donald Trump to restore a sense of sanity to the U.S.–Europe relationship.
Treating the Pentagon as an international welfare agency for well-heeled clients is not the only problem with NATO today. Creating an alliance so heavily dependent on one nation encourages other states to fantasize at America’s expense. Their representatives often concoct grand military schemes for “NATO”—in practice meaning the U.S.
For instance, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a medley of Baltic government officials proposed imposing a “no-fly zone” over the latter. To be effective, such a ban would require shooting down planes operating over Russia as well, leading to full-scale war. Yet neither individually nor collectively do Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania possess anything approaching an “air force.” Obviously, they wouldn’t be enforcing a no-fly zone.
More recently, Estonia’s President Alar Karis pushed for naval confrontation with Moscow: “Western countries should establish a military presence in part of the Black Sea to ensure the safe movement of commercial and humanitarian aid vessels.” Estonia, however, has precisely six boats, two for coastal combat and four for mining. They are backed by two planes and two helicopters—for transport. Evidently someone other than Tallinn would have to do the confronting.
Foreign commentators promote equally ambitious plans. Simon Tisdall, columnist for the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper, decided that the sword was, in fact, more powerful than the pen and wrote a column urging use of “NATO’s overwhelming power to decisively turn the military tide” in Ukraine. Yet the U.K. military is shrinking and isn’t likely to be turning “the military tide” in Europe or elsewhere.
Two weeks ago, Peter Bator, Slovakia’s Permanent Representative to NATO, came to the U.S. to complain to Americans that the alliance—meaning them, the Americans—had not intervened on behalf of Ukraine. Rather melodramatically, he imagined his grandchildren saying, “You were the most powerful military organization in the world and you decided not to militarily support Ukraine. Please explain this to me.” Tragically, he couldn’t. “I would have difficulties,” he admitted. He said he could “find many fine arguments” of a “theoretical rhetorical” nature but would “still have problems just explaining it to myself.” So off to war the transatlantic alliance should go!
Slovakia has only 17,950 people in the military and deploys just 30 main battle tanks, 60 artillery pieces, 19 combat aircraft, and 37 helicopters. Obviously, that doesn’t constitute “the most powerful military organization in the world.” Bator must be thinking of borrowing someone else’s armed forces “to militarily support Ukraine.” Probably not those of the Baltic states or London. I wonder whose?
It is one thing to be self-sacrificing and generous with one’s own life. Indeed, that’s just Biblical. Alas, that’s not what Bator expects. He is offering to sacrifice the lives of others—in this case, Americans. If NATO ends up at war with Russia, we all know who would be doing the bulk of the fighting and dying—Americans. If the conflict were to go nuclear, we know whom the Russian ICBMs would be targeting—Americans again. As for Slovakians, Bator undoubtedly would lead them in praising the U.S. for remaining steadfast for all that is good and wonderful as its cities burn and people perish. After all, that is Washington’s role in NATO, and he would probably express his satisfaction when talking to his grandchildren. What could be better than that?
It has long been evident to all that the transatlantic alliance is unbalanced. When it was created in 1949, even its proponents insisted that the U.S. would not provide a permanent garrison. Dwight D. Eisenhower declared, “We cannot be a modern Rome guarding the far frontiers with our legions if for no other reason than that these are not, politically, our frontiers. What we must do is to assist these people [to] regain their confidence and get on their own military feet.”
Unfortunately, the Americans stayed even as the Europeans recovered. And spent the last 75 years cheap-riding on the U.S. NATO officials are now celebrating that a majority of members, supposedly gravely threatened by Moscow, are finally devoting two cents on the Euro to their defense. Meanwhile, the expansion of NATO helped radicalize not just Vladimir Putin but the Russian public and was an important trigger for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Sixteen years ago, Fiona Hill, who gained notoriety after serving with the Trump National Security Council, warned President George W. Bush that inducting Ukraine and Georgia into NATO was “a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action.”
Perhaps most perversely, Washington has turned an alliance intended to augment U.S. security into an international dole. In recent years, NATO’s expansion policy has been bizarre, including nations whose militaries amount to rounding errors. Even the latest additions, Finland, added last year, and potentially Sweden, which awaits approval from Hungary’s parliament, are only minor powers despite their PR buildup. (What sets Helsinki apart is its outsize reserve.) Nor do they make America more secure. Rather, the U.S. has again expanded its responsibilities in confronting a major conventional military power which possesses nuclear weapons.
While NATO officials proudly boast about the alliance’s capabilities, many of its members matter not at all. Consider the weakest links which, like Slovakia, sometimes harbor grandiose ambitions that only America can fulfill. Slovakia’s armed forces, as mentioned, number 17,950. Allies with smaller militaries are Croatia, 16,700; Denmark, 15,400; Sweden, 14,600; North Macedonia, 8,000; Albania, 7,500; Estonia, 7,200; Latvia 6,600; Slovenia, 6,400; Montenegro, 2,350; Luxembourg, 410; Iceland, 0. In contrast, America has 1,359,600 men and women under arms.
This didn’t matter so much at the start. No one imagined a Soviet invasion of the original military midgets, Denmark and Luxembourg. They were geographically incidental to defending countries with significant populations and industrial potential, then France and Italy, and later Germany. Iceland offered bases for the West best denied to Moscow under any circumstances.
In contrast, the recent defense dwarfs are concentrated in the Baltic and Balkans, neither of which is of security significance to America. The former is of minimal geographic concern and difficult to defend. The latter still suffers from its toxic history of confrontation and conflict. Europe might believe either or both to be worth defending, despite the famed Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s observation that the latter “wasn’t worth the life of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” It is certainly not in America’s interest to do so. And it is America’s interest that should determine American military policy.
Europe deserves Trump’s harsh words, but diplomacy is necessary to disentangle the U.S. from the continent. Washington shouldn’t withdraw abruptly since its defense dependents have configured their militaries—that is, skimped on outlays and short-changed readiness for decades—in reliance on America’s permanent presence. They need time to adjust. But not too much.
It is essential that the U.S. set a definite deadline for terminating its security guarantee. Subsidizing the indolent and privileged is bad for Europe as well as America. The Western allies should remain close and continue to cooperate on issues of common concern. However, the relationship should be among equals about issues important to all.
Donald Trump’s limitations are obvious, but he understands Europe, its addiction to U.S. military welfare, and the resulting cost to this nation. President Joe Biden expects Americans to die for Europe. Trump believes Europeans should do the dying for their own countries. A serious foreign policy debate on this issue is long overdue.
The post Trump Is Blunt and Right About NATO appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: Notorious Trump apostate John Bolton just gave away the game on efforts to quash NATO reform.
“John Bolton Is Certain Trump Really Wants to Blow Up NATO”; at least, according to a Politico headline.
Politico recently interviewed Trump’s uber-hawkish former national security adviser, which appears as part of a campaign to drum up some sales for his 2020 Trump White House memoir titled The Room Where It Happened—now with a new foreword!
“We have been telling NATO allies for decades that they had to increase their defense spending. And those of us who have been doing this for a long time have done it to strengthen NATO so that the U.S. can be more flexible around the world,” Bolton told Politico. “When Trump complains that NATO allies are not spending enough on defense, he’s not complaining to get them to strengthen NATO. He’s using it to bolster his excuse to get out.”
At a recent rally in South Carolina, Trump said “NATO was busted until I came along.”
When Trump entered office, “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
One unnamed European president, according to Trump, asked the then-president if the U.S. would defend their country if they didn’t pay. Trump claimed he replied, “No, I would not protect you.”
“In fact, I would encourage [the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
Trump is a New Yorker, and that kind of talk is quintessentially New York. He’s busting their chops. Of course, this kind of talk is completely lost on smarmy European centrists. Nevertheless, it worked. Almost every NATO country increased their defense expenditures over Trump’s tenure. But don’t just take my word for it. More Bolton:
The commitment that all this turns on — at the NATO summit at Cardiff, Wales, in 2014 — was that over a 10-year period, all NATO members would end up spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product or more on defense, and that hasn’t happened. Spending has increased in recent years. And a good part of the reason for that is Trump.
Yet, Bolton says Trump’s effort to get NATO countries to pay up is “to lay the groundwork to get out.” What Bolton is really doing here is telling NATO partners across the Atlantic to avoid increasing defense expenditures in an attempt to “keep the Americans in,” as Lord Ismay once observed. If Trump becomes president again, there will be scores of Bolton types—left, right, and center—doing the same exact thing.
But ask any New Yorker, especially any involved in real estate—eventually, all bills come due, and someone comes to collect.
The post The Establishment Plan to Handcuff Trump to NATO appeared first on The American Conservative.
The shoe is on the other foot. Another distressed press conference from Biden this week showcased the anguish of the incumbent.
President Joe Biden emerged from hibernation to join the pile-on over his likely general-election opponent’s recent comments about NATO.
“Can you imagine a former president of the U.S. saying that? The whole world heard it,” Biden said at the White House. “The worst thing is he means it. No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator.”
At issue is the former President Donald Trump once again saying NATO members should, like Democrats often say of upper-income taxpayers, pay their fair share.
Trump told voters in Conway, SC an almost surely apocryphal tale of scaring NATO members straight on the subject of their defense spending. “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?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ ‘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.’ And the money came flowing in.”
Read in context, it is clearly Trump boasting of his ability to get NATO members to contribute more money to their own defense. The “encourage” Russia to “do whatever they hell they want” line was arguably dumb and irresponsible. But encouraging Russia was clearly not the point—encouraging burden-sharing was.
Even if Trump embellished the details, there is something to his basic story about how he handled NATO during his first term.
“Well, I worked with him for four years and I listened carefully because the main criticism has been about NATO allies spending too little on NATO,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN last month. “And the message has been taken across the alliance in Europe and Canada.”
“NATO allies have significantly increased defense spending,” he continued. “More and more allies meet the NATO guideline on spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. Poland is actually spending 4 percent of GDP, no other allies spending more than that. And in total, they have added 450 billion extra for defense.”
The Biden–Trump dust-up comes against the backdrop of the biggest foreign-policy fracture inside the Republican Party in recent memory. Republicans have historically been skeptical of government spending, but this skepticism often waned the further away from home the tax dollars are spent. Now you have some Republicans blocking a supplemental with aid not only to Ukraine but also Israel and Taiwan, arguing that more funds should be spent securing the southern border.
This bill has the backing of a bipartisan majority in the Senate, in addition to the White House. House Democratic leaders have pledged to help it pass by any means necessary, including through the use of procedural maneuvers to force it to the floor over the House Speaker Mike Johnson’s objections.
A generational torch might be passed from Mitch McConnell to Mike Johnson on these basic Republican priorities. Or the torch might get dropped during the handoff, burning the fragile GOP majority. But despite his tendency to clutter up valid points about ally burden-sharing or the folly of the Iraq War with junk about whatever the hell Russia wants and stealing Iraqi oil, Trump has had an impact.
Yet Trump and his allies are polarizing. College-educated voters who were starting to become more restrained on foreign policy in the aftermath of Iraq appear to be becoming less so. What seemed urbane and sophisticated to these voters under Barack Obama now looks gauche and narrow-minded—or much worse—when associated with Trump.
The burgeoning Democratic split over Israel really has less to do with foreign policy than multiculturalism, intersectionality, and how progressives feel about other issues, not least the West itself.
Not long after Biden spoke at the White House, his campaign sent out an email warning that Trump was risking “backlash”—not just from world leaders worried about the former president’s commitment to Article 5, but Wisconsin voters who “identify as Polish, Finnish, or Baltic.”
This was followed by another Biden-Harris campaign email about Michigan, where “nearly 900,000 residents identify as Polish, Finnish, or Baltic—all areas that could be at risk from Putin’s aggression.”
An adaptation of Tip O’Neill for the globalist era and what might come next: All politics are local.
The post Biden Is Slowly Losing the NATO Argument to Trump appeared first on The American Conservative.
State of the Union: The scene at the address from NATO’s secretary general, in front of a skeptical audience at the Heritage, demonstrated the headwinds for the cause of open-ended war.
On January 31, the Heritage Foundation hosted an event called “NATO Secretary General on Modern Needs of the Alliance 75 Years After Its Founding.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was present to deliver a message on how NATO is a vital security organization for not just the United States, but the world.
Dr. Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, opened the event with a short speech to contextualize Stoltenberg’s upcoming remarks: “It’s time for our NATO allies to step up to the plate so that NATO, this great and noble organization of security and peace, can flourish.”
He emphasized the need to address the “elephant in the room,” Ukraine. Roberts said that the United States should never put a foreign border ahead of its own, and that endlessly funding the war in Ukraine was not feasible, especially if U.S. military funding continues to not be matched by NATO European nations. “Our constitutional and moral obligations,” he said, “compel us to prioritize the interests of the American people.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, began his own speech by stressing that “these are dangerous times,” highlighting Russia and China as significant threats to international security. He claimed that China poses itself as the most serious long-term challenge to global peace, as the communist nation seeks to dominate and bully their neighbors and enemies. Nevertheless, Russia, Stoltenberg said, is the “most immediate threat” to the United States and its allies.
Part of combating Putin’s desire to expand Russia’s “sphere of influence” is, according to Stoltenberg, a continued collective effort to support Ukraine to the end of the line. He said,
We need to remain decisive and strong in our defense and support of Ukraine. Make no mistake—that is where we are being tested right now. Ukraine must prevail, and it can, but it needs our continued help.
He added, “Supporting Ukraine is not charity. It is an investment in our own security…. Supporting Ukraine is in America’s own interest.”
He finished his speech by declaring that, “NATO is an incredibly powerful idea that advances U.S. interests and multiplies America’s power…. NATO makes the U.S. stronger and all of us safer.”
Of course, it is to be expected that the secretary general of NATO would defend the organization he works for, but the online audience for the talk especially did not seem to take his comments lightly. “NATO and the US are the aggressors. This warmongering idiot is talking rubbish,” one user wrote in the Live Chat. “Nobody wants to fight in your wars anymore,” said another. “NATO can go straight to hell and take the WHO, UN, and their masters in Davos right with them!”
There seems to be a breakdown of communication between NATO and the taxpayers who so disproportionately support it. Stoltenberg’s comments and the crowd’s response show little movement toward an accommodation.
The post NATO on Trial at the New Heritage Foundation appeared first on The American Conservative.
Alex Formenton, a former Ottawa Senators player, at a National Hockey League game in Philadelphia in 2022.
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