How to protect Nato and other alliances from Donald Trump
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Last week’s Trump-Vance-Zelensky train wreck proved that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is on increasingly shaky ground. Starting with Donald Trump’s Feb.
12 phone call with Vladimir Putin about the Ukraine war, things got worse when Mr. Trump called Volodymyr Zelensky a “dictator" and the war’s instigator. Vice President JD Vance’s neocon-like complaints that Western Europeans were insufficiently democratic, without comparable analysis of Russia, eased Mr.
Putin away from diplomatic purdah. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to consider massive cuts in defense spending foreshadows even worse consequences. The Oval Office grudge match finished the picture, and all now points to trashing history’s most successful politico-military alliance.
Mr. Trump hasn’t formally withdrawn from NATO, but he is so gravely weakening it that leaving would simply be the final insult. NATO isn’t America’s only alliance in jeopardy.
In his first term, Mr. Trump’s assault on NATO arrived alongside his criticism of other allies, albeit not as publicly as today. The Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, the Australia-U.K.-U.S.
consortium to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, and the export-control rules designed to keep rogue states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction—are all at risk. Even bilateral ties with Japan and South Korea are in question. Taiwan should be very worried.
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