For most part, Trump’s not wrong. I agree with his proposal to end the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Well, he could be right in that years of abuse of article 5 followed by statements like this have a tendency to become self fulfilling prophecy.
After the USA invoked article 5 in September 2001, EU NATO and Canada rapidly sent assistance to the mainland USA for surveillance and self protection.
If the USA hadn’t mission creeped it into multiple invasions of Middle Eastern countries (except the country that sheltered ed the Wahabbi group which had organized 9/11 - Saudi Arabia) AND if EU NATO had started paying its fair share, things would be different.
If Trump reckons that the Russian demands for NATO to effectively abolish Article 5 so Putin can hit Ukraine again - and Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia, and possibly Alaska, without any meaningful NATO ally response - then he’s sorely mistaken.
Russia has scuppered every past peace deal by insisting on the 2021 ultimatum - that included a requirement that NATO members don’t even conduct joint training exercises inside their own countries without prior approval from the Kremlin.
That’s got nothing to do with rational Russian defence requirements; it’s a combination of irrational Russian paranoia, Russian butthurt, and Russians with a hard on.
Just like with Able Archer, where some Soviets commanders were convinced that they were looking at an attack on them despite the false positive nowhere near matching a real world attack pattern, and others were looking for any excuse to start world war three.
Putin’s regime wants ALL NATO aid between its own members in its own territory to not just be slow walked, but subordinate to a Moscow veto. If a NATO ally assists another NATO ally that’s been attacked by Russia - and does so without Moscow’s approval - Russia will consider that an attack on Russia.
I mean, you have to be spectacularly retarded not to see why US NATO cannot and must not ever concede to that element of the Russian ultimatum, and see why it’ll be a cold day in hell before you’ll see that NATO principle abolished without a single member of EU NATO vetoing it.
Imagine if the USA told Russia, “abolish the CSTO mutual security guarantees or we’ll launch a special military operation from Alaska to the far northeast and Arctic regions” and ask yourself if Putin would be so retarded as to avert war by saying yes.