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Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary in April, but there is growing concern that it was the last anniversary of the US playing a prominent role in the alliance, according to Foreign Affairs. This is at a time when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is leading US President Joe Biden in the polls, continues to consider NATO as a relic of the past.
“Trump’s defenders argue that he is bluffing to pressure Europe into spending more on defense. But former U.S. officials who worked closely with Trump on NATO during his tenure, including one of us (Hooker), are convinced he will withdraw from the alliance if he is reelected. Trump hugely resents the more moderate advisers who kept him in check during his first term. If he reaches the White House in 2025, the guardrails will be off,” the magazine reported.
In December 2023, Congress passed a law prohibiting the president from withdrawing the US from NATO without congressional approval, either by a two-thirds vote in the Senate or based on a resolution of both chambers. But Trump can also ignore that, the publication claims.
It is recalled that the former president has already expressed his doubts about the willingness to comply with the fifth article on mutual defense. The report explains that Trump can “dramatically weaken the alliance without formally leaving it.” To achieve this, he needs only to cut funding, withdraw US troops from Europe, and block important decisions in NATO’s highest deliberative body.
If Trump is re-elected and continues with his anti-NATO position, “the first casualty would be Ukraine” since he has consistently opposed additional military aid to Kiev.
“Should the United States weaken or terminate its defense commitment to Europe under Trump, European countries would feel more vulnerable and may become increasingly reluctant to send Ukraine their own vital military supplies. With dramatic aid cuts, Kyiv could be forced to negotiate an unfavorable agreement with Moscow that would leave Ukraine a rump state militarily and economically vulnerable to Russia,” warns the reports.
Furthermore, NATO countries now collectively spend 2% of GDP on defence, but in the absence of American support, European armies will be insufficiently prepared, equipped, and trained to fight a great power adversary, according to Foreign Affairs. In the opinion of the article’s authors, Europe remains highly dependent on the US in several important areas.
Regarding nuclear weapons, the magazine says that if Washington were to abandon NATO, the erosion of nuclear deterrence would seriously aggravate the problem of conventional deterrence in Europe.
“Nuclear weapons underpin the United States’ commitment to defend its allies and its nuclear capabilities form the bedrock of NATO’s capacity for deterrence. Should Trump close the American nuclear umbrella, Europe would have to rely on less than 600 British and French strategic nuclear warheads, a fraction of Russia’s total force of over 5,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads,” the report begrudgingly admitted.
Furthermore, the authors believe that without American leadership, it will be difficult to maintain cohesion among NATO’s other members. Since NATO was founded, the organisation’s command structure has always been headed by an American general, who oversees the military activities of all members. The magazine adds that it is unlikely that any other country will be able to fulfil this function at the appropriate level.
Foreign Affairs also warns that if Trump were to withdraw the US from the mess in Ukraine that the Biden administration created, “the damage would not be limited to Europe”, and American global influence in Asia and the Middle East could wane.
“For now, the defense ties between the United States and its allies in Asia, such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea, are growing stronger in the face of Chinese provocations. But a lack of confidence in U.S. commitments may well lead some of these countries to pursue nuclear weapons to offset China’s and North Korea’s nuclear advantages, undercutting the fragile stability that has prevailed in the region for decades. The withering of U.S. global leadership would also have profoundly negative consequences in the Middle East, where U.S. forces and U.S.-led coalitions are needed to deal with terrorist threats,” the report said.
These are issues that Ukraine has a serious possibility of facing since Trump is leading in the polls against US President Joe Biden ahead of November’s presidential elections. According to polling by The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, the billionaire leads Biden in every battleground state, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan, except Wisconsin, where the current president narrowly leads.
Although American war hawks, including the Foreign Affairs magazine, are warning that the US will lose global influence by abandoning Ukraine, this is only because they subscribe to the idea that global influence can only be achieved through military might rather than through economic and cultural means. If Trump were to be elected, Kiev would face abandonment from the US, and Europe will have to accept that negotiations with Moscow would have to start.
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under president trump the usa should also refuse to provide asylum to zelensky and his entourage so that ukrainian citizens can hang him and his gang from lampposts in kiev.
yoiu really dont get it. in the trump world zelinsky is a totally unimportent person unless he has money to take or invest.
only if wears sombero acces is denied.
he doesn’t get your gobbledegook? jeez, who does? i think your sombrero’s too tight on your head, pancho.
wishful thinking. trump has already refocused. congress would not have passed the arms bill for ukraine without trump support. foreign affairs is anti trump for many reasons. trump will definitely focus on dismantling the deep state and strengthening the border but he is now channeling ronald reagan vis a vis the axis of evil and he wants to be a winner.
too many people in the most naive way the usa people elect about fx ukriane.
they dont. for them its inside their only country, which matter.
and there is a deep that. thats someone like you having no free acces to the most of the world. you are kept and blame the wrong people.
one for sure. nato as well as un are to old in too many things.
but it will replaced by other opdated ones.
those both were repairs ww2 and made made new states. so many are not real new states and still blames us some 75 years ago.
i dont see russia should be there. they lie much more then usa and not even tell their own people about it.
trump in this is isolation. usa dint help europe against hitler until they were attacked by japan. it was exact the same in ww1,
now the not elected putin want the same about ukraine and everthing from ddr and east.
the american people are lied to all the time by their government. they were lied to about every single aspecg of the war in se asia beginning in 1945. lied to about pearl harbour. lied to about guatemala, iran, congo, indonesia, nicaragua, el salvador, iraq, afghanistan, the drug trade, soviet military capability, watergate, etc. you’re one stupid arsehole.
i tried google translate for jens homo posts but even that didn’t work! he just vomits gibberish. language is obviously not the issue. it’s more about iq and evidence of mental retardation
huh? zelensky’s first and last casualty has been ukraine. there’ll be nothing left for trump to do.