German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pithy observation Sunday that Europeans “really must take our fate into our own hands” following President Donald Trump’s first visit to Europe last week may prove a blip in history. It’s important to remember that Trump’s
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s pithy observation Sunday that Europeans “really must take our fate into our own hands” following President Donald Trump’s first visit to Europe last week may prove a blip in history. It’s important to remember that Trump’s top foreign policy and national security posts are held by people with traditional views about the value of America’s age-old allies.
But it also is possible Merkel’s comment might mark the beginning of the unraveling of the largest, most powerful and most successful alliance in world history: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed in 1949 by the United States, Canada and 10 European nations in recognition of the threat they jointly faced from the Soviet Union. Now 28 nations strong, NATO can point to a long list of accomplishments, most notably bringing stability and prosperity to North America and to much of Europe, a continent ravaged twice in the span of 30 years by world wars.
Yes, the president is correct when he says most other members of NATO don’t spend enough on their own defense and many are free riders on U.S. military might. Previous presidents have said as much for decades. But NATO is no parasite. The United States has benefited immensely from the sturdy security it has brought to the world.
“NATO essentially says to every American: You won’t have to fight alone,” U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute told The New Yorker last year.
This is not a view that Trump seems to grasp. In linking his grievances over NATO members’ military spending to his grievances over the U.S. trade deficit with Germany, the president casts U.S. relationships with other nations as zero-sum games in which there are only winners and losers.
In December, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius wrote that Trump’s unpredictability could at times benefit the U.S. in its dealings with other nations. That may be true with U.S. adversaries such as Iran and North Korea, yet it is hard to fathom how the president’s unpredictability helps with America’s traditional allies.
— The San Diego Union-Tribune
