The words of Donald Trump, who raised the possibility of no longer defending Alliance countries reluctant to invest in their defense, provoked strong reactions, but for the Alliance diplomats who knew him at the White House, they have an air of déjà vu.
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Recounting, during a campaign rally, a conversation he had with a head of state, the ex-president and candidate said: “One of the presidents (…) stood up and said: Sir, if we don’t pay and we are attacked by Russia, will you protect us? No, I won’t protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You have to pay your bills.”
This type of statement “undermines the security of all of us, including that of the United States,” reacted NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in a particularly firm statement.
The American billionaire’s comments calling into question Article 5, the very foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty, are “an attack on the soul of the Alliance” underlined a diplomat in Brussels, speaking under cover of anonymity.
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Article 5 states that if a NATO country is the victim of an armed attack, each member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack directed against all members and will take the measures it deemed necessary to come to the aid of the attacked country.
But many diplomats also recalled that this tone was not new and that it had resonated during Trump’s mandate, between 2017 and 2021, and during his previous campaigns.
“We are all very aware of the statements he can make,” summed up one of them. “These statements must be placed in the context of the American electoral campaign,” added another.
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“We stay calm”
At NATO headquarters in Brussels, however, we want to keep a cool head.
“We open our eyes, we remain calm, we continue,” summed up the French ambassador to NATO, Muriel Domenach, on X this weekend.
Most officials of course point out that Trump’s remarks which sow doubt on the unity of the Alliance are a boon for Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been seeking, since the start of the invasion of Ukraine ago two years, fueling the divisions.
But many of them recognize that beyond the very provocative style of the real estate mogul, the argument according to which many European countries must step up is relevant.
In fact, a majority of NATO’s 31 member countries have still not achieved the objective of 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to military spending, an objective that the Alliance set itself in 2006. The ambition was then to better share the effort between European countries and the United States.
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Donald Trump had recalled this many times during his presidency, like others before him, including his predecessor Barack Obama.
According to a NATO estimate, only eleven of them have achieved this objective in 2023.
However, the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014 helped to encourage Europeans to invest more in their means of defense. And the 2% threshold has become since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 a floor and no longer a spending ceiling.
“In two military programming laws, we have doubled the funds allocated to our defense,” assured French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné, in an interview this weekend with several European newspapers. These laws cover the period 2019-2030 and Paris hopes to achieve the 2% objective next year.
“Europe must do more, that’s obvious in the current geopolitical situation,” recognizes a NATO diplomat.
