Trump vs. NATO
The president threatens to turn a dream of peace into a nightmare.
Europe was created by history; America was created by philosophy.
That quote is often attributed to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and it is a fine quote. But here’s the truth: Europe, at least modern Europe, was created by America.
After World War II, the United States spared no expense in creating and funding the mechanisms that rebuilt and empowered Western Europe: the Marshall Plan, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Berlin Airlift and NATO.
We should take some pride in that achievement. A stable Europe became a valuable trading partner, essential geopolitical ally and a great place to visit on vacation if you’ve got the cash.
The economic payoff of the European market has paid back our original investment too many times to count. Houston’s exports to Europe last year alone were worth $25 billion. But the real accomplishment was instilling domestic tranquillity and liberal democracy on a continent ravaged by war. We built a beacon of peace and prosperity that mirrored our own — one that the rest of the world could look to as a model. The project of a modern Europe was no less than a step toward the enduring dream of peace on Earth.
It was a dream that President Harry S. Truman had in mind with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949 to protect Western Europe from Soviet aggression.
“By this treaty, we are not only seeking to establish freedom from aggression and from the use of force in the North Atlantic community,” Truman said at the time. “But we are also actively striving to promote and preserve peace throughout the world.”
It is a dream that Texas’ former Republican U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison echoed in her Senate confirmation hearing to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO. “I believe the shared values of democracy, protection of human rights, individual liberty, and rule of law bind all NATO members,” she said. “This bond that unites us must be reinforced.”
It is a dream that President Donald Trump should share. He’s in Belgium this week to meet with our NATO allies, but his attitude bears more resemblance to a hotel owner meeting with contractors. Trump has insisted that other NATO members aren’t paying their fair share. That simply isn’t true.
NATO has a budget of less than $2 billion that pays for common civilian and military infrastructure. The United States pays about one-fifth of that budget, which makes sense given our outsized economy. Nobody is behind in their collective payments. Actually, the only time NATO authorized an act of collective defense was to help the United States after the 9/11 terror attacks. And they continue to help us fight terrorism and contain rogue states like North Korea.
In 2006, however, NATO set a target for member states to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on their own military expenditures. That’s a target, not a rule. In 2014, after Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO leaders set a goal to reach the target by 2024.
So far, five of the 28 members have reached it and the others are on track. That’s not enough for Trump, who is practically threatening to withdraw from the alliance.
It’s an attitude that reveals a deep misunderstanding about NATO’s entire purpose. We don’t want our allies to spend more merely because it’ll balance some budget sheet. We want them to be strong in the face of Russian aggression in Eastern Europe — the sort of aggression to which Trump has demonstrated dangerous indulgence, if not feeble acquiescence, toward Vladimir Putin.
It also helps U.S. taxpayers if we could better share the financial burden of maintaining a strong Western world. Although cost-effective defense probably wasn’t a top priority when Trump approved a budget adding nearly $100 billion to the Pentagon over 2017 levels.
Now, more than ever, we need NATO to help thwart terrorism and prevent the rollback of post-Cold War gains in democracy, civil liberties and open society across the globe.
It is becoming clear that Trump’s strife with NATO isn’t really about money. He either doesn’t understand the alliance’s underlying goals, or actively disagrees with them. Trump appears willing to toss aside our nation’s greatest geopolitical accomplishment with little more than a tweet. We have to wonder: What, exactly, does he have to gain? Because it is far too clear what the United States has to lose.