this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Not US-ian, so I'm going to have to disagree hard. Back in 2016 and 2017 he called NATO "obsolete", although he later changed his mind and said it was "no longer obsolete", as well as taking a while to affirm US support for Article 5, and even saying “If they fulfill their obligations to us, the answer is yes,” when asked if the US would defend the Baltic NATO countries.
Now you could argue that he was using this to push the NATO defence spending requirements, which is a fair critique, but it sent a pretty clear message that under his presidency, the US honouring article 5 was conditional. This wasn't just a message to the other NATO members; it was a message to Putin as well whether intentional or not.
I believe that the silver lining of Trump's presidency is now being felt as Europe is seriously taking it's ability to autonomously defend itself seriously. This is probably why Petr Pavl is musing that it may be necessary to go beyond NATO's 2% spending targets, because Trump could get elected again, or someone like Trump, and there could always be more conditions added to US NATO commitments.
No such thing. There's spending goals, not requirements. The whole framing within the US has been nuts in general, it was framed as if there's a membership fee that's paid to the US, or in a common pot, while the actual spending goals are on each country's own military. There's a common budget for the headquarters and its staff but that has never been in question and everyone is paying their dues, anyway.
And for some reason the US insists on percentage of GDP numbers without even reference to capabilities or, indeed, efficiency. It's kinda easy for the US to rack up gigantic numbers there as you funnel tons of science funding and general subsidies through the military sector.
Correct, it is a spending goal, not a requirement. Or at most a soft requirement. Still, my point still stands, every NATO member on the "frontier" with Russia is meeting or exceeding that 2% goal. They are pulling their own weight. At least from what I recall, the three Baltic nations and Poland are all above the 2% GDP target, and I believe Finland, Romania, and Hungary are or will be as well.
The US and Trumps criticism of "freeloaders" could be seen to apply, but to the countries that aren't anywhere near the frontlines. I think Luxembourg is less than 1% GDP of spending on military, and Canada is around 1.5%. Trumps criticism, if interpreted generously could be taken to mean that the US wouldn't help Belgium, but if Belgium is invaded, there's something big going wrong.
Realistically, Trump's weak assertions would seem to signal that he doesn't care if Latvia is pulling its weight, because it's a small country and small countries deserve to be get eaten by bigger countries. This uncertainty is what would seem to have rattled European NATO countries and reignited the effort for a collective EU defence framework.
The other thing that bugs me with Americans whinging about "NATO freeloaders" is that Article 5, the collective defence clause, has been invoked once in the entire history of NATO. By the US after 9/11. And everyone stepped up. The US can complain about Canada's military spending, but Canadian soldiers that were fighting and dying alongside the Americans in Afghanistan. It's a bit rich coming from Trump, bone-spurs himself, that other NATO countries aren't pulling their own weight.
Everything in life is conditional. Why should American boys die defending people who won’t defend themselves?
Remember Trump is a bullshit artist. He just talks to sound tough. NATO would stand with or without him. It’ll take more than Trump to break nato up.
I’m not a fan of Trump but I do like that he shook some bushes about funding their militaries. It isn’t our job to save their asses because they’re unwilling.
It's diplomacy though. Some things are better said behind closed doors as it were.
Going back to Cold War brinksmanship, the point of NATO was to loudly say that you were ride-or-die, go-to-the-wall with all your NATO homies. It made the risk of messing with NATO countries too high, likewise with the Warsaw Pact.
Now would all NATO allies go all in? 100%, all the way? Who can say with certainty. Still, so far there's only been one US president who has said… it depends. For the record, Trump walked that back, but it certainly got a lot of NATO countries closer to Russia to quickly point out that they were over the NATO 2% GDP commitment.
Still, Article 5 has been invoked once in NATO's history, and it was by the US. It's why Canada was in Kandahar, Netherlands in Helmand, etc. Too my recollection, every single NATO country participated in Afghanistan at the US's request.
Also, every NATO country on the frontier (as it were) is well over the NATO 2% GDP minimum. The three Baltic countries, Poland, the UK and the US have been over the 2% GDP minimum for a while. Finland is already well past that before joining, and I believe several more countries will hit the goal in 2023.
That’s part of his brand being unpredictable. Why it’s a cute trick. I want a president who’s fairly predictable.