Post #5574

Why Trump Went On a Rampage Against NATO The NATO alliance has in recent years survived existential challenges - ranging from the war in Ukraine to multiple bouts of pressure and insults from Trump, who has questioned its core mission and threatened to seize Greenland. But it is the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, thousands of miles from Europe, that has nearly broken ​the 76-year-old bloc and threatens to leave it in its weakest state since its creation, say analysts and diplomats. But combined with other barbs aimed at Europeans in recent weeks, Trump's comments have provoked unprecedented concern that the U.S. will not come to the aid of European allies should they be attacked, whether or not Washington formally walks away. The result, say analysts and diplomats, is that the alliance created in the Cold War that has long served as the basic fabric of European ​security is fraying and the mutual defense agreement at its core is no longer taken as a given. This is the worst place (NATO) has been since it was founded," said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who now leads the Europe, Russia, and ​Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. That reality is sinking in for Europeans, who have counted on NATO as a ⁠bulwark against an increasingly assertive Russia. As recently as February, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte had dismissed the idea of Europe defending itself without the U.S. as a "silly thought." Now, many officials and diplomats consider it the default expectation. "NATO remains necessary, but we must be capable of thinking of NATO ​without the Americans," said General Francois Lecointre, who served as France's armed forces chief from 2017 to 2021. NATO has been challenged before, not least during Trump's first term from 2017 to 2021, when he also considered withdrawing from the alliance. But while many European officials until recently believed that Trump could be kept on board with pomp and flattery, fewer now hold that belief, according to conversations with dozens of former and current U.S. and European officials. Trump and his officials have expressed frustration over what they see as NATO's unwillingness to help the United States in a time of need, including by not directly assisting with the Strait of Hormuz ​and by restricting U.S. use of some airfields and airspace. Trump's latest comments follow other signs of an increasingly unsteady alliance. Those include his stepped-up threats in January to wrest Greenland away from Denmark and recent moves by the U.S. that Europeans see as particularly accommodating toward Russia, which NATO defines as its principal security threat. The administration has remained essentially mum amid reports that Moscow has provided targeting data for Iran to attack U.S. assets in the Middle East and has lifted sanctions on Russian oil in a bid to ease global energy prices that have spiked during the war. At a meeting of G7 foreign ministers near Paris last week, Rubio and Kaja Kallas, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, had a tense exchange, according to five people familiar with the matter, underlining the increasingly fraught transatlantic relationship. Kallas asked when U.S. patience ​with Putin would run out over Ukraine peace negotiations, ​prompting Rubio to respond with irritation that the U.S. was ⁠trying to end the war while also providing support to Ukraine, but the EU was welcome to mediate if it wanted to. In 2024, he said on the campaign trail that he would encourage Putin to attack NATO members that do not pay their fair share on defense. By the last annual NATO summit, in June 2025, the alliance was in his good graces, with Trump delivering a speech effusively praising European leaders as people who "love their countries." Next week, Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, who has a strong relationship with Trump, is set to visit Washington in an effort to change Trump's view once again. #NATO#Rutte#trump#alliance 📱American Оbserver - Stay up to date on all important events 🇺🇸