President Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Flynn, “is expected” to endorse expanding the NATO alliance to include a small country that used to be part of the Soviet Union, a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner.
Montenegro’s accession to NATO has bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, but it is certain to anger Russian President Vladimir Putin, who personally condemned the proposal last year. The endorsement could also reassure European allies and American foreign policy leaders of Trump’s willingness to oppose Putin, despite exchanging compliments with him during the 2016 election cycle.
“Basically every [interagency] level below Flynn, the recommendation is ‘lets keep going forward,'” the senior administration said.
Montenegro, a Balkan country that was part of Yugoslavia before the collapse of the Soviet union, hopes eventually to join the European Union as well. Russia opposes that western tilt and is suspected of organizing a failed coup attempt against the Montenegrin government in in October. Republican Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., blocked a vote on ratifying the treaty in December.
“I think that many are referring to this as a provocation to Russia, and also, I think NATO is too big already,” Paul told Politico, which first reported Flynn’s expected move. “I think we should think long and hard if whether or not we are willing to go to war if Montenegro has a skirmish with somebody that surrounds them. Ultimately, joining NATO is not necessarily a benign thing.”
Paul is a rare opponent of the expansion, which is supported by leading Republicans and Democrats — particularly those who believe that Russia was behind the coup attempt.
“The accession of Montenegro of NATO should be non-controversial,” Maryland Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in December. “If we don’t [support it], we play right into Putin’s hands. Putin did everything he could to disrupt the Montenegrin parliamentary elections in an effort to stop the expansion of NATO.”
The White House’s gesture towards Montenegro comes as Trump is under fire for demurring when Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly called Putin “a killer” during an interview that aired ahead of the Sunday.
“There are a lot of killers,” Trump replied. “You think our country’s so innocent?”
The Montenegro announcement would not be the only adversarial stance toward Russia that Trump’s team has taken, however. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced last week that Trump plans to maintain the punitive economic sanctions that then-President Barack Obama imposed after Putin annexed Crimea and destabilized eastern Ukraine.
An endorsement of Montenegro’s NATO bid would be well-received by European leaders who worry that Trump’s “America first” foreign policy might entail a withdrawal from traditional alliances. But it might have limited value as a predictor of his future decisions.
“I think it’s more just that this is something that’s been worked in a bipartisan way on the Hill for a long time, working with allies for a long time, and so it would be a change if we were to change it,” the senior administration official said.
