Posted on 04/28/2016 6:39:15 PM PDT by Elderberry
In both his March New York Times interview and his more recent foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel, presidential candidate Donald J. Trump has created tremors within America’s stodgy, utterly complacent foreign policy elite. He has alarmed those self-anointed Mandarins regarding several issues, including his comments that under certain circumstances he would not object to Japan and South Korea acquiring independent nuclear deterrents.
But his comments about NATO have probably caused the most consternation. Trump’s own preference appears to be for greater burden-sharing within the alliance—a unicorn that American politicians, policymakers, and pundits have been chasing for more than six decades. But there is a much sharper edge to his demands than there are to the calls from most proponents of burden-sharing. “Our allies are not paying their fair share,” Trump thundered in his speech at the Mayflower Hotel. “The countries we are defending must pay for the cost of this defense, and if not, the U.S. must be prepared to let these countries defend themselves.” [Emphasis added]
One must go back to the mid-1950s to find a warning that stark. Probably the most significant and best known example was the threat that Secretary of State John Foster Dulles issued to conduct an “agonizing reappraisal” of America’s defense commitment to Europe if the NATO allies could not develop a united policy regarding West Germany and make a more serious effort at collective defense. Yet even that effort at brass knuckles diplomacy ultimately failed. European leaders never took the warning seriously, believing that their American counterparts regarded Europe as far too important to America’s own security and prosperity to ever consider abandoning the continent to possible Soviet domination. They called the Eisenhower administration’s bluff and quickly confirmed that it was a bluff. There was no reappraisal of Washington’s defense commitment to Europe, agonizing or otherwise.
A Trump administration would likely find intense institutional resistance even to more limited cutbacks. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) discovered the power of the bipartisan pro-NATO lobby in the 1970s when he merely sought to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe. The push to expand the alliance and desperate search to find alternative missions for the organization, even though the Soviet Union (the principal reason for NATO’s creation) dissolved at the end of 1991, is ample testimony to the extent of those entrenched, vested interests on both sides of the Atlantic.
But the vastly changed economic and security environment - a fiscally stressed America, a populous and relatively prosperous democratic Europe, and a weak, declining Russia, gives Trump’s threat of a U.S. withdrawal unprecedented credibility. The nations of the European Union now have both a larger population and a larger collective economy than does the United States. They also have a population three times larger than Russia’s and an economy nearly ten times larger. They can afford to build whatever military forces they deem necessary to defend their region.
With regard to the other troubling security problem facing the alliance, Islamic extremism, several of the European powers are the old colonial rulers in the Middle East. Trump and other Americans could be excused if they concluded that perhaps the Europeans should step up to take care of a security headache in their neighborhood instead of always expecting their NATO ally to ride in from several thousand miles away to resolve the problem. We have tried that strategy for decades without much success.
Mr. Trump, your complaints about NATO just identify the symptoms of the underlying problem. The real problem is Europe’s unnatural and unhealthy continued security dependence on the United States. We don’t need greater NATO burden sharing. We need to shed our obsolete NATO burden entirely. Being prepared “to let these countries defend themselves” should not be a policy of last resort. It should be our primary objective.
Then NATO.
DeGaulle of him...
Your response is perfect
Hi, Europe, I want you all to pay more, so I’m going to say I’m leaving NATO. But I don’t really mean it.
Now pay up or I’m out of here!
If Europe is going to allow themselves to be invaded by Islamic terrorists, then we are fools to be over there without a whip hand. And if they don’t agree to it we should get out and let their suicide complete itself, and then negotiate - or destroy - the resulting Caliphate.
But it’s time to call a spade a spade. Germany and the UK are all but gone already.
Is Turkey still in NATO?
It is?
Then why are we?
Sad, but true.
There’s no helping them now.
Agreed. The NATO Charter is not a suicide pact.
L
On Trade...Free Trade....No...."Fair Trade" yes
Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-MT) discovered the power of the bipartisan pro-NATO lobby in the 1970s when he merely sought to reduce the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe.
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Huumm? 1970s Nixon, Ford, Carter were the Presidents.
Ted, remind me again how this lobbying thing works. Oh yes! They give you money to run for office and expect you to do things for them when you get there. Well, the only people who have given Donald J. Trump money are a million or so of us little folk, and this is what we want him to do! Maybe it will be different this time. :-)
The cost of United States forward deployment of forces, prepositioning of equipment and supplies, and maintenance of bases in Europe should be reimbursed by NATO/EU. The rest of NATO’s own contribution is armed forces already there (and not entirely credible if the United States is not totally involved.)
I do not believe the article was on Trade.
NATO’s mission ended 25 years ago.
Now its just a bodyguard for the ongoing progressive-left social-engineering and destruction of Europe.
NATO should have been disbanded the day after the CCCP collapsed.
I remember Rush saying long ago that the US paid for the defenses of the European nations that they spent all their time moving left. Let Germany, etal pay for their own defense against Russia.
Excellent commentary. I agree 100% with Cato Institute. Probably the most severe example of Europe’s inability is when they could not or would not resolve Bosnia/Serbia on their own and that directly impacted their vital national interest in their own backyard.They hounded the US which had no national security interest in the issue to come over there and resolve it for them with our air power and diplomacy.
I came to the conclusion, living in the UK some years ago, that we should leave NATO. The socialists I was around did nothing but bitch and moan about the US the entire time I was there. Including the blatant anti-American bias from the BBC.
I’m seriously beyond giving a $hit about our ‘perceived allies’. The only people who seemed to care were those who remembered WW2. Even that was done mockingly of ‘our boys’ and how ‘brash and uncouth’ they were. Also that our soldiers got better rations than theirs, blah, blah. NOT OUR FAULT! Enough.
Europe committed suicide, American being in NATO can’t help them.
Exactly my thought.
The Russians have a point - the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Warsaw Pact is history.
NATO is an organization in search of a mission. The ideology of blocs was rendered obsolete with the end of the Cold War.
If Europe has no interest in confronting Russia, its none of our business to tell it what its interests are.
By the same measure, Europe has no right to demand we do for it what it should be capable of doing for itself.
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