NEW YORK — President Trump’s sharp criticism of NATO succeeded in rattling “the complacency” of European allies and producing foreign policy dividends, according to former rival Jeb Bush.
Bush was Trump’s favorite foil during the Republican presidential primaries, standing as an avatar of the maligned GOP establishment. But the former Florida governor argued Trump has moderated his policies in office, while his heterodoxy has paid off in some areas.
“As it relates to NATO, look, here’s a place where the rhetoric actually has been helpful,” Bush said during a foreign policy discussion hosted by United Against Nuclear Iran.
“Granted, the fact that he didn’t embrace NATO to begin with, but you’re starting to see European countries increase their defense budgets. … From time to time, it’s okay to shake up the complacency.”
That’s a marked divergence from the conventional response to Trump’s suggestion the United States might not come to the defense of NATO allies who underfund their militaries, despite an obligation to do so under Article V of the alliance treaty. That statement provoked pushback even from his relative allies among Senate Republicans.
“NATO is the most successful security alliance in the history of mankind,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said in July 2016. “Our objective should be to strengthen NATO. One way we can strengthen NATO is to get our European partners to spend the two percent [of gross domestic product on defense]. … We also need to stand behind the Article V guarantee of NATO with every NATO member — not because we want to start a war with Russia, but precisely because we don’t.”
Bush’s assessment comports with statements from NATO’s top civilian leader, who touted a $10 billion spending increase across the alliance in an April visit to the White House.
“We are … seeing the effect of your strong focus on the importance of burden-sharing in the alliance,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said. “Fair burden-sharing has been my top priority since taking office. We have now turned a corner. In 2016, for the first time in many years, we saw an increase in defense spending across European allies and Canada.”
But, Bush also suggested Trump’s foreign policy idiosyncrasies have been tempered by his national security advisors.
“The foreign policy is moving in a direction that would be a more traditional foreign policy,” he said. “We’ve always had left and right, but generally in the post-World War II era, there’s been a broader consensus. And I think President Trump, with his foreign policy team intact, is moving in that direction. I may be wrong, his impulses may contradict that from time to time. … I would follow more what we’re doing rather than what he says.”
