A debate over NATO’s mission, or how to update the organization, would normally be welcome, but President-elect Trump’s suggestion that the alliance is obsolete is clumsy and reckless. Trump’s statement dropped like a grenade into the already-roiling post-election debate over his fondness for Russia’s dictatorial president, Vladimir Putin.
Trump seems to regard NATO as a geopolitical favor that America does for the rest of the world. “Countries aren’t paying their fair share,” he told the Times of London on Monday, “a lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States.”
The criticism is just; the alliance is expensive and our allies do not pay what they should. But to acknowledge that should be the first step toward reform not destruction.
Only five of the 28 member-states spend the 2 percent of gross domestic product that they should on military preparedness. America is left by its European allies to pay $650 billion a year, 70 percent of the total bill and more than double the combined contributions of the 28 other member countries.
But those numbers do not touch the bigger questions of America’s moral duty and strategic interest.
NATO’s Article 5 has been invoked only once, rallying members to the defense of a member nation under attack. That was after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after which NATO forces marched to war in Afghanistan to root out the twin evils of the Taliban and al Qaeda.
That history encapsulates America’s moral duty. But what of its strategic interest? Eastern Europe is increasingly threatened by the dirigiste ambitions of Putin, who has rolled his tanks into Georgia, annexed Crimea, occupied eastern Ukraine and daily threatens Russia’s “near abroad,” rattling his sabre at Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
These countries’ sovereignty depend on NATO, and Trump is fooling himself if he believes America could watch disinterestedly from the fastness of the western hemisphere while Russia engulfed Eastern Europe. Signaling to Putin that Washington is backing away from NATO increases rather than decreases the chances of further hostilities in Eastern Europe that would suck this country in.
NATO’s central premise, that an attack on one member is an attack on all, worked from 1945 onwards to check Moscow’s imperial ambitions. NATO demonstrated peace through strength, and it needs to continue to do so, for although the Soviet Union is no more, Putin is acting to reconstitute it to the extent that he can. The former KGB officer lamented the fall of the communist empire as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
A great catastrophe in the 21st century would be the fall of NATO. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., knows this, and when asked about Trump’s remarks, affirmed Tuesday that the alliance remains “indispensable and invaluable, and an enormously important contributor to world peace and stability.”
He partly defended Trump’s remarks as mere “voic[ing] concern” about funding. But if Trump is really only trying to shake other member countries into paying their proper share, he is going about it the wrong way. His words are actions. By calling NATO obsolete, he weakens the alliance, emboldens Russia and places American allies and ultimately American lives at risk.
