When Donald Trump abandons NATO, it calls all American defence responsibilities into question

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For decades, American political figures knew there was an immutable rule in a presidential campaign: Whatever they said – supported or opposed abortion rights, called for higher tariffs or free trade, proposed to raise or reduce taxes – there was one thing a credible White House candidate could not do, and that was to question the future of NATO.

But Donald Trump is the biggest disrupter in an age of disruption, and with remarks aimed at the heart not only of NATO but also at the architecture of the entire postwar world, he disrupted the American presidential election, the Atlantic alliance and the global balance of power.

Mr. Trump responded to a question over the weekend about a Russian attack on a NATO ally that hadn’t fully met its military contribution. “No, I would not protect” that country, he answered, adding that he would encourage the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want.”

“No presidential candidate or president would ever say anything like Trump’s remarks for fear of bipartisan indignation,” said Thomas Whalen, a Boston University historian. “These remarks threaten the entire post-World War II international order. I have no doubt he means it.”

Trump’s threat to ‘encourage’ Russian attacks on NATO allies that don’t pay enough sparks concern

The Trump remarks came a day after the 2024 presidential race was jolted by a special counsel report stating that President Joe Biden had compromised mental acuity.

“This is a much bigger deal than Biden’s age,” said Matthew Dallek, a George Washington University historian. “Put aside all of Trump’s incoherent rants, this is one of the most dangerous statements a major American political figure has ever made. It gives a very loving, handwritten, personal invitation for Vladimir Putin to run wild in Europe.”

In the 1980s, those close to president Ronald Reagan sometimes urged his aides, who kept a tight rein on the 40th president’s remarks, to let Mr. Reagan be Mr. Reagan. This recent uproar shows there is no need inside the Trump circle for calls to let Mr. Trump be Mr. Trump.

The ripples of his comments roiled domestic waters in the United States and washed ashore in Europe even as they lapped into Canada, where mounting voices are urging the country to contemplate a world where the United States no longer is the guarantor of security in North America.

“These latest comments will only confirm for Canadian policy-makers that stormy weather lies ahead for Canada-U.S. relations should Trump once again become president,” said Vincent Rigby, former national security and intelligence adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Canada will need to prepare for every scenario under Trump.”

The conviction that events worldwide affect the security of the United States and the corollary that international agreements help keep the peace is nearly a century old.

The 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, designed to outlaw war and prevent a second worldwide conflict, bears the name of Frank Kellogg, secretary of state under president Calvin Coolidge. Even before the outbreak of the Second World War, president Franklin Delano Roosevelt acknowledged that “when peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.”

That has been the animating idea of American foreign policy for more than three generations. In the 1950s, Republicans, using the rhetoric of “captive nations,” vowed to liberate the countries under Soviet domination. In the decades that followed, the principles behind NATO were embraced even by political figures with the least interest in involvement overseas.

The “Come home, America” leitmotif of the nomination acceptance speech of the presidential candidate most skeptical of American engagement, 1972 Democratic presidential nominee Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, included this passage supporting the American defence consensus: “We will do that not only for ourselves, but for those who deserve and need the shield of our strength – our old allies in Europe and elsewhere.”

Mr. McGovern, a B24 bomber pilot during the Second World War, flew 35 combat missions over Europe and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Unlike every president from 1945 to 1993, Mr. Trump did not serve in the military.

“He’s a former president,” former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a disabled Vietnam War veteran and 1992 Democratic presidential candidate, said in an interview Monday, “and this is massively destabilizing.”

In his classic 1994 Diplomacy, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger wrote that although NATO was usually considered an American investment in collective security, it was instead “the institution that most nearly harmonized America’s moral and geopolitical objectives.” Dr. Kissinger said that the architects of the postwar alliance “took it for granted that the prize for victory was a lasting Atlantic partnership.”

That assumption now has been shattered. Mr. Trump has made similar remarks before, but the clarity of these comments, and the coda that opened the door to Russian expansion, represented a new frontier in the debate about American defence responsibilities worldwide.

Republicans generally played down the Trump remarks, characterizing them as part of his bargaining style, designed to prompt countries like Canada, which has a defence spending rate of about 1.3 per cent of GNP, to meet the NATO target of 2 per cent.

“Give me a break – I mean, it’s Trump,” GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, once a voice for American solidarity with its allies, said in a New York Times interview. “All I can say is while Trump was president nobody invaded anybody. I think the point here is to, in his way, to get people to pay.”

Calling the Trump remarks “reckless and dangerous,” Mr. Rigby said the myriad shared defence arrangements between Canada and the United States meant that an attack on Canada would constitute an attack on both countries.

“Significantly ramping up defence spending at home and overseas, whether to appease a U.S. president or to function in a world where the U.S. is no longer a guarantor of our security,” he said, “needs to be a serious option.”