NATO seeks reset for post-Trump era
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Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden, are making final preparations for this month’s face-to-face NATO leadership summit in Brussels, which will see a reset after the military alliance came under the greatest strain in its history during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Former US officials, including ex-National Security Adviser John Bolton, have confirmed that Trump came close to announcing America’s withdrawal from the organization, which was co-created by Washington in the postwar era. This would have been a body blow to its credibility. The nadir came in the extraordinary scenes of 2018, when, with Trump throwing the alliance’s annual summit into disarray by threatening to pull America out, there were a series of cancelations of key announcements.
To make matters worse, in 2018, Trump not only criticized NATO colleagues, but then went on in the days that followed to have a cordial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This erratic behavior not only alarmed Canada and America’s Western European allies, but also put a chill down the spine of Eastern European states too, many of which were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
However, the challenges within NATO during the Trump era were by no means only of his making. One of his criticisms of the alliance — that more than half its members still do not spend the prescribed 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense — is a long-standing sore point that other US presidents have also highlighted. Moreover, while Trump supported Brexit, that dimension of the potential fracturing of the West was due to UK political issues that he exacerbated, rather than outright created.
Moreover, Trump was not the only alliance leader to criticize NATO during his presidency. There was also French President Emmanuel Macron’s astonishing assertion in 2019 that the organization was experiencing “brain death” on its 70th anniversary. This remarkable outburst was driven by what he saw as a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, including the diminished commitment to NATO of the US under Trump. He exemplified his assertion by mentioning the White House’s failure to consult Western allies before pulling US forces out of Syria.
This development reverberated inside the organization, as it opened the way for a much-criticized move by Turkey — itself a NATO member that had just decided to buy the Russian-made S-400 anti-aircraft missile system — to push into Syria and create what it called a “security zone” along its border. Meanwhile, Kurdish forces, which had been helping Western forces fight Daesh, were expelled from the area.
Macron’s comments, while clearly heartfelt, were slapped down at the time by other leading European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Their preferred approach was to keep a diplomatic silence and try to “last out” the Trump era, hoping that he would be a single-term president.
With a reset now needed, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will, at the June 14 summit, seek to underline the continuing relevance of the alliance of countries with a total population of about 1 billion. For all its weaknesses, NATO remains one of the world’s most successful military organizations, and it has helped underpin the longest period of sustained peace in the West’s modern history.
Post-Trump and Brexit, there will also be a show of unity around the prospect of strong continued defense and security cooperation, with London and Washington at the heart of this. In the face of new challenges, as well as opportunities, the alliance is already recalibrating its strategic direction. At the last face-to-face summit, for instance, new perceived threats like China were formally discussed for the first time.
Inevitably, Russia will also be a key topic, especially vis-a-vis Ukraine, which has recently seen a build-up of Moscow-led forces. Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the wider destabilization of Ukraine, NATO’s relationship with Moscow remains at one of its lowest points since the end of the Cold War.
For all its weaknesses, the alliance remains one of the world’s most successful military organizations.
Andrew Hammond
One other bonus issue for intra-alliance harmony is that the long-standing burden-sharing issue, which was perhaps Trump’s chief gripe, given that the US accounts for about two-thirds of total NATO defense spending, may be moving closer to a resolution. Numerous NATO states — even before Trump championed this issue — had been pushing ahead with increases in defense spending, including a cross-section of the EU under a new “European Defence Action Plan” that advocates greater military cooperation among the union. It is the combination of Russian military assertiveness and instability in the Middle East and Africa, not just Trump’s apparently uncertain commitment to Europe’s security, that drove this spending move.
The NATO summit will, therefore, seek to bring solidarity following the disruptive diplomacy of Trump. But Stoltenberg is well aware that, lurking beneath any show of unity, there remains considerable concern about whether the alliance is fit for purpose.
- Andrew Hammond is an Associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.
