Donald Trump has never had warm and cuddly feelings for NATO, the military alliance that nonetheless survived his first term in the White House largely intact. The question is whether it will survive his second term should he win the U.S. presidential election.
The anxiety levels among the 4,000 international diplomats and staff who work at NATO headquarters are rising as Mr. Trump tightens his grip on the Republican party and the presidential candidate nomination. The Jan. 15 Iowa primary handed him a landslide victory. But even before he took Iowa, there were ominous signs that he might renew his attacks on the alliance just as many of its 31 member states pump weapons and money into Ukraine to try to prevent a Russian victory in Europe’s biggest battle theatre since the Second World War.
Less than a week before the Iowa caucuses, Thierry Breton, the French European Commissioner for the Internal Market, told the European Parliament about a chilling conversation between Mr. Trump, when he was president, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you and support you,” Mr. Trump said, according to Mr. Breton. The then-president added, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”
Mr. Breton called the conversation between the two leaders “a big wake-up call and he may come back. So now more than ever, we know that we are on our own.”
Mr. Trump, who in mid-January was polling well ahead of President Joe Biden in the crucial swing state of Georgia, has not said what’s in store for NATO, where the United States is by far the biggest sponsor – it spends more on defence than the next 10 countries around the world combined. As president, he threatened to yank America out of NATO unless its member states, including Canada, spend far more on defence. But his recent remarks have been cryptic. His campaign website says only that “We have to finish the process we began under my administration of fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”
What does that mean?
Opinions inside and outside of NATO are all over the map, ranging from doomsday scenarios for NATO to aggressive demands that NATO members spend far more on defence. “A second Trump administration could be a very different partner for NATO but not necessarily leave the alliance,” said Ian Lesser, the American vice-president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and executive director of its Brussels office. “There is a potential political cost to leaving that he may not want to make.”
In Brussels, NATO diplomats are reluctant to say on the record what they think a second Trump presidency would mean. Privately, they confirm an undercurrent of fear, given that he is unpredictable and prone to rash, sometimes vindictive, decisions. One ambassador whom The Globe agreed not to name because they were not authorized to disclose the matter publicly said everyone is concerned about a Trump victory.
Some NATO member states do not fear that Mr. Trump will pull the United States out of NATO, even if they think he could damage the alliance in other ways. The prime concern of a few of the former Soviet countries in Eastern Europe has more to do with his plans for Ukraine than NATO itself.
So far, Mr. Trump has shown little desire to pump Ukraine full of weapons and funds to cover its budget deficit as Kyiv spends virtually all its income on the war effort. Preserving Ukraine’s territorial integrity at any costs does not appear to be his desire. Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have praised each other over the years and Mr. Trump has claimed that he could end the war “in 24 hours” if elected, which may be his way of saying that Russia could keep the Ukraine territory it occupies in any land-for-peace deal with Kyiv.
“Western support to Ukraine is essential. The risk of Ukraine losing the war, and the consequences of it, would be enormous,” Tomasz Szatkowski, the Polish ambassador to NATO, told The Globe and Mail. “An emboldened Russia could challenge NATO directly, with Poland, the Baltic states and Moldova particularly vulnerable.”
Ukraine aside, NATO is no doubt bracing for a variety of unpleasant scenarios under a Trump presidency. A few defence policy observers seem convinced he is done with NATO, though, as president, he could face formidable bipartisan political resistance if he tried to remove the United States from the alliance. “I do think that, if elected, Trump will withdraw the U.S. from NATO,” said Rosa Brooks, who holds the Scott K. Ginsburg Chair in Law at Georgetown University Law Center and is Adjunct Senior Scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute. “The only question in my mind is whether he would do it in stages, with a pretense of respect for process and at least a nod to allowing NATO time to address his concerns, or whether he would just say, ‘we’re out, bye.’”
Iain Martin, a British journalist and author who is director of the London Defence Conference, notes that Mr. Trump does not have to extract America from NATO to trigger chaos within it.
“He could question Article 5,” he said, referring to the section of the North Atlantic Treaty that says that an attack on one NATO ally is an attack on all of them. “He could fight the Joint Chiefs of Staff [the most senior soldiers in the U.S. Department of Defense] on European deployments, withdraw from the bases agreement with Sweden, leave Gotland [the Swedish island in the Baltic Sea] to the Russians, turn a blind eye on Russian menacing the Baltic states or the Finnish border, and many more options for craziness.”
During his term in office (2017 to 2021), Mr. Trump was more bark than bite when it came to NATO, but his bark was ferocious – he managed to scare many countries into ramping up their defence spending, though most had been doing so already under the encouragement of Jens Stoltenberg, the former Norwegian prime minister who has been NATO Secretary-General since 2014. Beating up on the laggards, including Canada, emerged as a top theme of his presidency. In 2018, he said, “How about if we got into a conflict because a country was attacked? Now we are in World War III and protecting a country that wasn’t paying its bills.”
In 2014, the year that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, NATO defence ministers agreed that member states should spend 2 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence within a decade to ensure the alliance’s ability to conduct war on short notice and not run out of ammunition overnight.
The goal has yet to be met by most countries, though overall spending is rising steadily. Ten years ago, only three NATO countries were doling out 2 per cent or more; by 2022, seven were. Since then, the number has climbed to 11 (Canada was not among them; its military budget for 2023 was just under 1.3 per cent of GDP, according to NATO data). “The decision to spend 2 per cent of GDP was taken under the Obama-Biden administration and reinforced in 2023,” said Oana Lungescu of the Royal United Services Institute, who was NATO spokesperson between 2010 and last year. “But Trump’s aggressive approach focused minds. You cannot ask others to defend you if you yourself spend little to defend yourself.”
While the spending is going in the right direction, the progress has been fairly slow and Mr. Trump could still get angry at the tight-fisted countries. But that does not fully explain the potential next president’s disdain for NATO.
Mr. Lesser, of the German Marshall Fund, says that Mr. Trump’s approach to NATO generally reflects his mistrust of big institutions, especially of the international variety. See, for instance, his assault on the World Trade Organization while he was launching trade wars against China and other countries. “He is skeptical of institutions and his brand of populism is a revolt against the elite of some of these institutions,” Mr. Lesser said. “And his views resonate with his base.”
Janice Stein, founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at University of Toronto, suggests that another factor may be behind his scorn for NATO – his admiration for Mr. Putin, and vice versa. Remember that he referred to Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, as “genius” and “savvy” to the shock of most of the Western World. “He doesn’t like NATO and we know that,” said Ms. Stein. “And now NATO is much more focused on containing Russia.”
Would Mr. Trump, as president, really leave NATO or damage it in other ways?
Those who believe that his transactional persona will take over think not, since boosted spending by NATO countries translates into jobs in the United States, home of the world’s mightiest defence contractors. The Washington Post reported in November that of the US$68-billion of American military assistance delivered to Ukraine since the start of the war, almost 90 per cent was spent in the United States. In other words, being part of NATO is good for business.
The other argument for staying is political. NATO enjoys widespread support in Congress. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, has taken a positive view of NATO, endorsed Sweden and Finland’s attempts to join the alliance (Finland is in, Sweden is still waiting) and said Congress has “no excuse” to avoid sending more aid to Kyiv. As if to make the point that Congress fears Mr. Trump’s attacks on NATO were he to become president, it approved legislation in December that would prevent any president from withdrawing the United States from the alliance without the Senate signing off or an act of Congress.
Still, Mr. Trump is unpredictable and, as Ms. Stein notes, the moderating figures that may have prevented him from shredding NATO when he was president may be absent in a second term. “There might not be anyone around him to talk him down from making rash decisions,” she said.
NATO would never admit it is preparing a survival plan, and there is no hint that one is being formed. The consensus-driven decision-making process would make any open planning difficult. But there is little doubt that Mr. Trump’s possible return is crowding the minds of NATO generals and diplomats as he comes on strong in the primaries.
Apparently not by coincidence, France and Italy are promoting the idea of a “European army,” as if they are preparing to fill a void that would be left by America’s withdrawal from NATO or taking a smaller role within it. That scenario might please France, especially, which has had a somewhat difficult relationship with NATO and is eager to boost its military and geopolitical influence in Europe (France withdrew from NATO’s military structure in 1966, but remained an ally, and rejoined in 2009).
The question of whether Mr. Trump would do a runner on NATO is impossible to answer but some defence experts and NATO observers think the alliance would be unwise to assume he would leave it untouched. “Europe needs to wake up, spend far more on defence and increase production dramatically to build deterrence,” said Mr. Martin. “Europe needs a plan B, fast. Prepare for the worst, and hope to be pleasantly surprised.”