Does Donald Trump Really Intend To Pull Out Of NATO If Elected President?
maybe the real Trump foreign policy threat resides elsewhere
My 2/5/2024 keyword search of the key phases [ "donald trump" "pull out of NATO" ] yields these results
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22donald+trump%22+%22pull+out+of+nato%22&t=newext&atb=v336-1&ia=web
News stories about Trump's intention to pull the US out of NATO membership that go back to the spring of 2016, when the allegation was lodged by Hillary Clinton. According to Factcheck:
FactCheck Posts
What’s Trump’s Position on NATO? By D'Angelo Gore
Posted on May 11, 2016
"Hillary Clinton went too far when she claimed that Donald Trump said “we should pull out of NATO.” Trump has said that he would “certainly look at” pulling the United States out of the international security alliance, because it is “obsolete” and “is costing us a fortune.” But the Clinton campaign provided nothing indicating that Trump advocates pulling out now..."
As we know, Trump won the 2016 election, and did not pull the US out of NATO. Even though he could have, the same way he pulled out of the Kyoto accords. It's worth noting that Vladimir Putin didn't invade Ukraine during Trump's 1/2016-1/2021 term, either. And that Ukraine ended up getting more military aid from Trump than from Obama or Bush. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/obama-trump-biden-ukraine-military-aid-1.6371378
The allegation was made again, in July 2018:
Reuter's investigated the accusation and concluded that it was untrue:
"BRUSSELS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump did not threaten to pull out of NATO at the second day of a summit on Thursday, despite a tough rebuke of allies for spending too little on defense, two NATO sources told Reuters.
Asked if he had issued the threat to quit the military alliance, both sources said: "No"." https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nato-summit-trump-threat-idUSKBN1K216H/
The allegation was made again in November 2018, based entirely on inferences by readers of a Tweet made by Trump:
"Trump torches allies, threatens NATO pullout after tense WWI memorial trip to Paris Alex Lockie Nov 12, 2018, 8:00 AM EST
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-slams-allies-threatens-nato-pullout-after-wwi-paris-trip-2018-11?op=1
But Trump didn't pull the US out of NATO, did he?
Some background, from April 2019:
"...After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, member countries agreed to boost defense budgets and “move toward” spending 2% of their gross domestic product on defense by 2024. The U.S. spends about 3.4% of its GDP on defense.
Since Trump took office, European allies and Canada have added $41 billion to their defense budgets. By the end of next year, this will rise to $100 billion, Stoltenberg said. Germany, however, remains the main target of Trump’s ire because it now plans to spend 1.5% by 2024, which is lower than the 2% guideline..."
https://apnews.com/united-states-government-f483749057fa4b46a4fece85ed491eb1
Trump's intentions in regard to his bluster on NATO were always clear to some of us: he was out to drive a hard bargain. As it happens, he got some success with his threats: the other big players in the NATO alliance are actually coming across with a few billion more euros for the Treaty Organization.
Donald Trump’s first real job as a young teenage was knocking on doors to collect delinquent rents on his dad’s apartments, some of them in tough neighborhoods. That's one of the few government-related things that Trump is competent at doing. He may not have any interest in economics and tax policy other than how to hire people to protect his own assets, and his knowledge of the American role in world history seems to begin with George Patton and end with John Wayne. But Donald Trump can drive a tough bargain at a negotiating table. Incidentally, that’s a wheelhouse that his recent predecessors have been notably reticent to enter, much less actually grappling with balancing diplomacy and hardnose national interest. It's an asset that appeals to his following immensely- and one that kneejerk Trump haters can only spin by Making Him Wrong, even when he got a positive result. I've never thought that Trump was Presidential material, but at least I'm able to give him credit where credit is due. It also needs to be pointed out that complaints from American news media pundits about the US footing too much of the bill for NATO go back to the Cold War era. The other countries really did make promises to pay that they didn’t keep. They really have been skating on our indulgent largesse. Trump may be the first President to have ever taken that grievance seriously.
My own dry appraisal of post-USSR era NATO: after 30 years of eastern encroachment, the perpetuation of NATO and its continuing expansion toward the borders of Russia- with practically no negotiation of Russian national security concerns- ended up getting us into a proxy war with the Russians. Even nations with bad leaders have valid national security concerns, and the interventionists in charge of US foreign policy studiously ignored that. Studiously, and also unscrupulously. That’s what led to the war, where the Russians are in clearly in the wrong. But it’s also the case that Russia was put in a corner, and as foreign relations, that’s plain stupid. (Unless provoking a regime to lash out in aggression is the intended policy goal.)
That part is done (although not forgotten, at least not by me.) Now that the war is on, I support Ukraine getting the weapons to carry on fighting as long as the vast majority of the Ukrainian people support the war. Donald Trump may hold the exact same opinion. (Has even one reporter simply asked him that question directly?) In my view, the bottom line is that it’s a decision entirely for Ukrainians, most of whom presently appear to support staying the course of armed resistance against the invasion. Dragging the Ukrainians to the negotiating table by depriving them of ammo is not a policy course I can support.
That said, I don’t think a President Trump could sell out the Ukrainians if he wanted to. It’s politically unviable. The GOP may be holding up Ukraine aid now, but they’re playing the sort of brinksmanship theater that they would never play with a Republican President. If Trump were to oppose more aid to Ukraine as President, I think he’d be looking at a veto-proof majority to overrule him. That’s as much a function of the disposition of American popular attitudes as it is anything else.
The bottom line is that Trump had four years to pull out of NATO (which conceivably would have considerably bolstered the prospects of success for a Russian invasion of Ukraine.) But Trump didn't do that. And Putin didn't invade Ukraine until nearly two years after Trump left office, either.
Matt Taibbi has been widely misunderstood in regard to his coverage of Donald Trump, and the history of partisan political attacks aimed at him. He's spent nearly eight years trying to tell the Democrats that concocting empty accusations and slipshod insinuations about Donald Trump is a tactic that was practically guaranteed to backfire from the start. Ironically, Trump's weaknesses- outright vacancies, in some cases- would have allowed amply room for his opponents to bring strong challenges in order to discredit his competence on all sorts of issues. Even in terms of personal charisma, Trump's act gets old after a while. But compared to the insulated ineptitude of bien pensant lifestyle liberal Democrats at connecting with ordinary working people and smallholders, Trump comes across as a wise old sage.
A streetwise response to Trump would have been to dim the spotlight on him. An authentically streetwise response to the GOP would have been to start LISTENING to the legitimate grievances of ordinary working people (instead of devising favors to do FOR them, without their input.) But the lawn-tennis liberals who fund and run Democratic Presidential campaigns are not streetwise. And their response was Panic. Panic that Trump organizers and supporters have been able to spin into their own set of extreme responses, including Sedition and Conspiracy To Subvert Democracy.
That's where we're at these days, this race to the bottom, about who's going to strike more fear into the Voters about what the Opposition would do if victorious. It would be a much more clear choice if only one side was going off the rails. But it's still happening. Which brings me back to the most recent “news report Predictions” from 2023 and 2024, that Trump Will Pull The US From NATO If Elected In 2024:
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-plots-pull-nato-doesn-130000410.html
https://politicalwire.com/2023/10/23/trump-plots-to-pull-out-of-nato/
https://www.salon.com/2023/10/24/the-biggest-internal-threat-threatens-to-pull-us-out-of-nato--again/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-plots-to-pull-out-of-nato-if-he-doesnt-get-his-way/ar-AA1iHAeA
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/2790854/trump-would-never-help-europe-if-attacked/
https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-25-trumps-plan-to-destroy-nato/
Those are all top stories on the first page of my search for [trump "pull out of nato" 2023]:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trump+%22pull+out+of+nato%22+2023&t=newext&atb=v336-1&ia=web
I can post more. They're all either re-posts of the same report, or they rely on the same story as their principal source:
Rolling Stone
Trump Plots to Pull Out of NATO — If He Doesn’t Get His Way
Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley
October 23, 2023·6 min read
The original is behind a paywall, but it's found re-posted in the first Yahoo link (and elsewhere.)
As if that story- featuring comments by two unnamed sources inside the Trump campaign as its only new content- weren't enough, Rolling Stone went on print a follow-up story, featuring Biden's condemnation [I could only find a paywalled story, so far]:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/biden-campaign-trump-nato-plot-1234860683/
Considered in terms of investigative journalism value, this is like bundling junk securities in tranches to sell as a CDO with a AAA rating. And if you're mad that I pointed out that it's both sleazy and incompetent to pass off that sort of weak-ass partisan propaganda as journalism, I can only imagine what you'll think of the American electorate when you read this:
‘Wow!’: NBC’s Kristen Welker Shocked By New ‘Truly Stunning’ Biden-Trump Poll
Lee Moran Updated Mon, February 5, 2024 at 7:12 AM EST·2 min read
https://news.yahoo.com/wow-nbcs-kristen-welker-shocked-080308522.html
"“When you ask folks, ‘Hey, if it’s the general election and it’s Trump versus Biden,’ in our poll, Donald Trump now leads Joe Biden by five points. Compare that to the last time we pulled back in November. Trump was ahead then, but it was only by two points.”
As it happens, I have my own concerns about a 2024 Trump Presidency- not on account of anything to do with NATO or Ukraine, but over my worries about Trump going back in to the Middle East with a series of moves that will end up in a full-scale war. I'm already worried about Biden's escalations over US military bases in Syria (where US troops are based in the hostile territory of a regime that we're actively involved in trying to overthrow with our, uh. proxies) and Iraq (where the Iraqi parliament has voted twice to expel US troops- once after Trump's assassination of Iranian General Suleimani, and again just a few weeks ago, a hint that the Biden administration has refused to take.) But at least Biden appears to be trying to thread some sort of needle in the Middle East.
My fears about Trump have nothing to do with NATO or Ukraine. They're about a possibility that no one in the press seems to want to even ask him about: if Trump were elected President and Commander-in-Chief in 2024, would he seek a direct confrontation with Iran, up to and including American military commitment in an all-out war?
It’s worth noting that I wouldn’t believe a “no” answer from Trump on that subject. As with any other US president, once in office, the simple fact of some words spoken on the campaign trail is meaningless. Trump would do what he feels like doing, particularly if he could find a way to get the Congress to go along with it. So, well, what do you think Trump might feel like doing? Do you feel lucky enough to vote for your guess?
Still, it would be neat to hear someone bring up the question.
It's also worth noting that Trump is tight buddies with Binyamin Netanyahu, and Joe Biden is not. If Netanyahu somehow manages to survive his political challenges into 2025, there's no telling what a US-Israel alliance would do with Trump and Netanyahu as its leaders, in terms of increasing direct military involvement and widening the war in the Middle East.