Donald Trump, who will deliver an address from the Oval Office tonight, isn’t giving up on his aims for his war in the Middle East. This time his target isn’t Iran but Nato. “You don’t even have a navy,” he declared about Britain before going on to denounce the North Atlantic alliance. “I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told the British Daily Telegraph.
There hasn’t been such a loony interview since Kaiser Wilhelm II created an international furor in 1908 in the same paper by denouncing the English as “mad, mad, mad as March hares” for their alleged hostility to Germany. Trump, who is about as impetuous as the Kaiser, has gone into overdrive to extract some semblance of victory from his ill-advised foray into Iran. The refusal of America’s allies to enmesh themselves in his venture has provided Trump with a convenient pretext to fulfill his long-standing dream of alienate America from Europe. In essence, it would be a case of two birds, one stone for Trump: ending the Iran war and waving hasta la vista to Nato.
Whether Trump can officially withdraw America from Nato matters not a whit. He is already eviscerating the alliance’s Article 5
This morning, the American president announced on social media that Iran is eager for an end to the conflict: “Iran’s new regime president, much less radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
Whether this is actually true or not is an open question. Trump has repeatedly proclaimed that he is negotiating with the Iranians – who have steadfastly maintained that nothing of the kind is occurring. With petrol prices soaring and Iran’s enriched uranium safely ensconced underneath a mountain, Trump would essentially be surrendering if he ended hostilities on their terms. The likelihood that gas prices will subside seems scant and an Iran that had stared down the mighty superpower would be fortified and emboldened to pursue its nuclear dreams.
But there are short-term upsides for Trump. An end to the conflict would allow him to return to more pressing concerns such as the construction of his White House ballroom (which a federal judge has put on hold) and a presidential library in Miami (which will feature several golden statues of him). Nor is this all. Declaring victory against Iran and withdrawing from Nato would help assuage stock markets as well as hardcore Maga followers who have cried betrayal over a fresh war of choice in the Middle East – the very prospect that Trump had promised to avert.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that, when it comes to foreign affairs, Trump’s true aim remains a reconciliation with Russia. To this end, he sees severing ties with Britain and Europe as a plus. Consider his recent behavior. He has remained silent about the Kremlin’s readiness to supply Iran with targeting information that has resulted in the deaths of American soldiers in the Middle East. He allowed Putin to send a tanker to Cuba and breach the American oil blockade of the island. Perhaps most revealing is his invocation of the Russian president as a character witness in attacking Nato as a paper tiger. The National Review’s Jim Geraghty recently pondered this strange state of affairs to conclude that:
The conspiracy theories about Trump being blackmailed by the Russians are actually somewhat sympathetic to him. People can at least imagine knuckling under to a sufficiently dire blackmail attempt. The alternative is that the President just isn’t all that bothered by anything Putin does, up to and including attempts to kill Americans.
Whether Trump can officially withdraw America from Nato matters not a whit. He is already eviscerating the alliance’s Article 5 – the protection clause that promises one for all and all for one. Like the volatile energy markets, Nato may become another casualty of Trump’s ill-conceived war of choice.
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