Yes, Trump's comments about Putin were reckless, but he is right to question the future of NATO

By: Simon Jenkins / The Guardian
Translation: Telegrafi.com

Donald Trump is "terrible and unbalanced", everyone says. His invitation to Vladimir Putin at the weekend - to invade NATO and "do whatever the hell he wants" if Europe doesn't spend more on its own defense - "puts all our security at risk", NATO chief warns Jens Stoltenberg. The alliance is supposed to be the bulwark of freedom against dictatorship, not about who pays and for what.

We can start by letting Trump know that the most outrageous abuse of NATO was done by the US. Washington's demand that the alliance support the revenge invasion of Afghanistan after 11/XNUMX was a costly, protracted fiasco that had nothing to do with Western security but everything to do with American neo-imperialism. Likewise, calling on allies to join other militaristic interventions, from Vietnam to Iraq and throughout the Middle East. The "withdrawal of the United States from empire" is proving as bloody as Britain's, and nothing else is more embarrassing. It is scandalous that a former president of the USA incites Putin to war against NATO.

So Trump is indeed unbalanced, but is he right? It is consistent. In the last decade it has encouraged one of the periodic phases of US isolation. It has suggested that with communism dead, the idea of ​​conflicting global ideological empires became obsolete. For him, Western countries have enough problems at home. It is not their job to interfere in other people's border disputes or internal conflicts. Britain and others may wish to play a role on the world stage, in the style of the 19th and 20th centuries, but if they do so they themselves must pay. Let them build crappy aircraft carriers that don't work.

On a more pragmatic level, NATO's expansion to include the Baltics and Poland was clearly provocative. Putin's response in Ukraine was so shocking that the West was right to object to leaving alone Putin's smaller actions in the Caucasus. Now the opposition has turned into a stalemate and a way out must be found. NATO must become a force for peace, not for endless war. Unless she intends to fight for Ukraine forever, her long-term intentions remain unclear. Trump's skepticism is justified.

It is hard to believe that Trump will dismantle NATO, as he is said to have privately threatened to do. But Article 5 of the Alliance, its pledge to go to war if the integrity of any member is threatened, requires reconsideration. This is especially true of the US approach to the Pacific and Europe's own diminishing sense of political unity. It is hard to believe that Putin will try to topple more governments in Eastern Europe. But, it could encroach on the borders and fuel the discontent of the Russian minority in the bordering states. Georgia 2008 or Ukraine 2014 are more likely precedents than Ukraine 2022.

In that case, Trump – and not just Trump – is right to ask what the US's job is in this. It is not clear whether Europe can provide convincing answers. /Telegraph/