Trump terrifies Europe

OPINION:

One of the more popular conversations among European politicians is the many reasons Europe should be terrified by the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidential term.

These conversations are more urgent because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obvious desire to restore a post-Soviet Russian empire and, hence, Europe’s fear that Russia’s war on Ukraine will expand to other nations. Europeans saw the long months in which President Biden — instead of telling Americans why aid to Ukraine was in our interests — let Congress stew. They read Mr. Trump’s remarks about NATO. From those things Europe concludes that the U.S. is an unreliable ally, whether Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump wins.

Despite the fears of Mr. Trump and the vacillation of Mr. Biden, NATO has been quite aggressive in its statements, some made by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, that Ukraine will inevitably become a NATO member. He and other European politicians should instead be talking about how NATO needs to be remade.

Mr. Trump is infamous in Europe for calling many of the NATO nations deadbeats because they don’t spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense as NATO agreed they should in 2006.

In the past few months, Mr. Trump has gone much farther with his rhetoric. In February, he said that he’d “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” with NATO nations that don’t spend enough on defense. He added: “You don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple.”

It’s not at all simple. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty requires us — and all other NATO members — to defend one another from attack. Mr. Trump appears to be threatening to violate the NATO Treaty and not join in the defense of a member that hasn’t met the NATO spending minimums.

Mr. Trump doubled down on that about 10 days ago when he said he could force NATO members to spend 3% of their GDP on defense. His threats won’t get the NATO nations to increase their defense spending, but the surprising belligerence of French President Emmanuel Macron and the awakening of some in the European press may help get the EUnuchs of the European Union and NATO to invest more in their own defense.

In its Feb. 24 lead editorial, the liberal Economist magazine said that while the threat of Russia is growing, Western deterrence is weakening. It said: “The security arrangements based on NATO that emerged from the second world war … are so much a part of Europe’s fabric that remaking them will be an immense task. Europe’s leaders urgently need to jettison their post-Soviet complacency. That means raising defense spending to a level not seen in decades, restoring Europe’s neglected military traditions, restructuring the arms industries and preparing for a possible war. The work has barely begun.”

In one paragraph, The Economist managed to both state why the NATO Treaty is obsolete and propose the means to fix it. It’s a tall order that the EUnuchs will refuse.

In February, Mr. Macron said that NATO nations shouldn’t rule out sending troops to help Ukraine fight the war Russia started. That is an enormously foolish idea because Russia would attack French troops and France would use that as an excuse to invoke the Article 5 mutual defense clause of the NATO Treaty.

More recently, in what has been characterized as a Castro-like two-hour speech, and in an interview with The Economist, Mr. Macron said that Europe faces an imminent danger from Russia and that “things can fall apart very quickly.” They already have.

Mr. Macron said that whoever is elected president of the United States in November, NATO must shake off its military dependence on the U.S. That’s a nice idea, but the EUnuchs won’t end their post-Soviet complacency. They believe that subsidizing their economies is more important than defending their nations.

Mr. Macron clearly wants France to take a leading role in the new defense architecture and industrial revolution. He says he wants to do away with the “petty nationalism” that hobbles Europe. But petty nationalism is all France has been concerned with since the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon in 1815 at Waterloo.

Much needs to be done to modernize NATO. Mr. Trump is right that NATO nations need to spend a lot more on defense, but most refuse to do so. Some nations — especially Turkey — need to be excluded from any future Atlantic alliance because of its president’s opposition to NATO’s interests, his dedication to radical Islamism and his cozy relationship with Russia.

Mr. Trump must, at some level, realize that defending Europe is a vital U.S. national security interest. Instead of threatening NATO with a violation of Article 5, he should propose that the NATO Treaty be renegotiated to require more investment in defense and better coordination of the methods and means of defense. He should restate the tasks outlined in the Economist editorial as his own and stick to them.

As this column has stated before, Mr. Biden needs to restore our deterrent with the tools it needs to be credible and the stated objectives it must serve. He won’t do that, so it is up to Mr. Trump to do it if he is reelected.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.