Trump has NATO all wrong

Former president Donald Trump has long made it clear that he deeply resents NATO, a 75-year-old military alliance that is composed of the United States and 30 other countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.

Trump escalated his criticism of NATO on February 10, 2024, when he said that, if he is elected president again in November 2024, the US would not defend any member country that had not “paid up.”

Trump also said that he would encourage Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, “to do whatever the hell they want” with a NATO member that was “delinquent” in paying for its defense.

NATO is the Western world’s foremost defense organization. It is headquartered in Brussels. The central idea behind NATO’s existence, as explained in Article 5 of NATO’s 1949 treaty, is that each NATO country agrees to defend any other NATO country in case of an attack.

NATO has no standing army and relies on member countries to volunteer their military forces to carry out any operation. So all NATO countries agree to spend 2% of their annual gross domestic product on military defense in order to support NATO.

Some countries, including the US, UK, Poland, Finland, Greece and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania devote more than 2% of their GDP to military defense. About half of NATO’s members, including Germany, France, Norway, Spain and Turkey, spend less.

NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg said in a written statement on February 11 that Trump’s suggestion “undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.” Other political leaders also criticized Trump’s comments as highly dangerous.

As a scholar of history and international affairs, it is