Trump’s Post was Not Innocent At All; The Europeans are Terrified
The U.S. President’s message to the NATO alliance was implied, yet crystal clear to those sitting in the Élysée Palace and 10 Downing Street. The greatest threat to Europe in the last four years was deferred solely thanks to American aid; now, Trump threatens the most important strategic alliance the world has known since WWII.
U.S. President Donald Trump published a long and detailed post today (Tuesday), recounting the refusal of many countries around the world to join his war against Iran and the operation to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
However, instead of calling these countries by name, as he did for Australia, Japan, and South Korea in that same post, the U.S. President chose to label the group of countries that turned their backs on him as "NATO countries."
The American President could have labeled those nations, such as France, Germany, or Britain, as "Europe," or simply called them by name. His choice to mention the NATO alliance is not innocent at all; in fact, it triggers Europe’s greatest anxiety since Trump's election, set against the backdrop of the bloody war in Ukraine.
Since Trump was elected to the presidency (and in fact even before) he has clarified many times his lack of commitment to the Trans-Atlantic alliance.
Time and again, Trump has spoken implicitly about NATO's inefficiency, and primarily about the "too generous" contribution, in his view, of American money to the alliance. Trump demanded that NATO countries dramatically increase their defense spending, even threatening that if they did not, he would "tell Putin to attack whatever the hell he wants."
Today, Trump returned to the message that the U.S. is essentially NATO’s "sucker":
"However, I am not surprised by their actions, because I have always viewed NATO, where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year defending those same countries, as a one-way event: we defend them, but they will do nothing for us, especially not in a time of trouble," Trump wrote.
At the beginning of the post, the U.S. President chose to put the words "our allies" in quotation marks, effectively emphasizing that the alliance is unreliable.
This is an threat (implied, perhaps) but the intentions behind it are very clear to those sitting in the Élysée Palace and Downing Street.
Minutes later, in an Oval Office meeting, the President clarified his intentions even more explicitly: "We shouldn't have helped Ukraine."
In other words: From now on, fend for yourselves without me.