Politico: Trump may refuse to expand NATO if he wins the election
Donald Trump is hatching grandiose plans for reforms in NATO, writes Politico. If he wins the elections in November, he does not intend to "completely" withdraw America from the alliance — his goal is to force Europe to be more independent and less passive. However, Europe itself will not be able to cope with this mission.
Donald Trump has threatened to withdraw America from NATO so many times (or, at least, pretended to threaten) that for many of his critics, the question is solely when exactly this will happen — and not whether, if elected, he will have the guts to permanently break with the alliance, which No less, it is about to celebrate its quarter-century anniversary.
In truth, according to interviews with former national security officials in the Trump administration and defense experts who are likely to work with him during his second term, America is unlikely to fully withdraw from NATO. But even if the United States does not formally leave the organization, this does not mean that the alliance will survive the Trump presidency intact.
Trump will not only expect European countries to dramatically increase spending on common defense (his main claim to them when he was president) in exchange for continued U.S. participation in the organization's work — he can also take what Dan Caldwell, a military expert who knows well how Trump's national security advisers think, He calls it a "radical reorientation" of NATO.
"In fact, we have no choice anymore," Caldwell told POLITICO Magazine, citing the growing US debt, a significant decrease in the number of military recruits to the American army and the state of the military—industrial complex, which cannot cope with challenges from both Russia and China.
Neither Trump nor his campaign staff have yet named a new national security team or openly adopted a new NATO agenda. His staff did not respond to several requests for comment on this article.
But the former officials and experts who spoke for this article — some officially, and some on condition of anonymity — are involved in the ongoing debate in Trump's entourage about how aggressively Europeans should be pushed to create a security architecture that the American billionaire likes better.
According to these officials, the United States will maintain its nuclear umbrella over Europe during Trump's second term, while maintaining its air power and bases in Germany, England and Turkey, as well as its naval forces. Meanwhile, the tasks of manning the ground forces and equipping them with armored vehicles, as well as logistical and artillery issues, will eventually pass from the hands of the Americans to the Europeans. Parts of this plan were outlined in an article published in February 2023 by the Trump-affiliated Center for Renewing America. But in the following months, a more detailed consensus on the new concept of NATO emerged and took shape among Trump's supporters.
The shift she envisions will include "a significant and substantial reduction in America's security presence, that is, a departure from the role of the main supplier of combat power in Europe — which implies providing support to the continent only during crises," said Caldwell, who previously worked as chief adviser to Russell Vaught, a former senior official of the Trump administration In May, he was appointed Director of Political Affairs at the National Headquarters of the Republican Party. He is expected to be one of the first violins in the second Trump administration. Wout is also the president of the aforementioned "American Renewal Center."
Another innovation of Trump's plan is the transition of NATO to a two—tier structure. The essence of this idea, first proposed by another senior official in the administration of the still ex-president, retired Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, is that member countries that have not yet reached the goal of spending 2% of GDP on defense, "will not benefit from military generosity and security guarantees from the United States." States," according to one national security expert, a Trump supporter who spoke on condition of anonymity. This can be seen as a violation of article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which obliges each member of the alliance to take "such actions as it deems necessary" to help the party to the Treaty that is under attack. But experts from Trump's foreign policy "brain trust" note that the wording of Article 5 is very flexible and does not require any of the NATO members to respond to aggression with the use of military force.
Trump has consistently expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that NATO allies are "fleecing America" by not meeting the 2 percent spending target. More recently, he actually invited Russia to attack "the slackers in NATO," saying that he would "encourage" the Russians to "do whatever the hell they want" with member countries that have not yet reached the defense spending target. And this is a decade after the North Atlantic Treaty Allies promised to do so at their summit in Wales in 2014.
The desire to end the conflict in Ukraine, which has been going on for two and a half years, as soon as possible, is also likely to be one of the cornerstones of Trump's policy towards NATO. As part of a previously unreported plan for Ukraine, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate is mulling a deal under which NATO commits to stop further expansion to the east — especially to Ukraine and Georgia — and is negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin on how much of Ukrainian territory Moscow can keep for itself. This was reported to POLITICO by two other national security experts from the Trump team.
In general, Trump's new approach to these issues will amount to a revolution in NATO — one that, according to many critics, Europe is completely unable to accomplish in the foreseeable future. The United States is by far the alliance's largest investor, spending about $860 billion on defense — in 2023, this accounted for 68% of the organization's total budget. This is more than 10 times higher than Germany, which ranks second after the United States in terms of the amount allocated to joint defense. A significant portion of this US spending, amounting to about 3.5% of the country's GDP, goes to protect Europe, although the Pentagon refuses to release exact figures, says Jeremy Shapiro, director of research at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
At a meeting with President Joe Biden in Washington earlier this month, outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that 23 of the 31 NATO members are close to meeting the alliance's military spending target of 2% of GDP. "This is more than twice as much as four years ago," Stoltenberg said. Germany is expected to join this group for the first time since the early 1990s — but that country's hawkish defense minister, Boris Pistorius, seems eager to do more, urging Germany to increase defense spending to 3.5% of GDP.
But even if Germany reaches that target, some former Defense Department officials who support Trump say it still won't be enough. "I am in favor of preserving the North Atlantic Alliance, but I think the only way to do this — and I keep telling the Europeans about it — is to take on a much greater burden," said Elbridge Colby, who led the development of National Defense Strategy in the first Trump administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Development of the Armed Forces forces and who is said to be applying for a high position in the field of national security in the second administration.
"We are not tired, we cannot do 10 times more than the Germans, and we must be ready to be tough with them. But it will have corresponding consequences," Colby said in an interview. — We want NATO to be active, but we also want the Europeans to lead it. That was the original idea. It was Dwight Eisenhower's idea." Only now, faced with the threat from China, the need for such changes is becoming much more urgent, Colby believes. "The United States does not have enough military forces to bypass all its opponents. ... Russian Russians cannot break all our spears in Europe against Russian shields when we know that the Chinese and Russians are cooperating, and China is a more dangerous and significant threat," he explains.
Some of the experts supporting Trump are mainly focused on the issue of spending, while others want European countries not only to spend more, but also to take on a much greater military burden. Kieron Skinner, former head of political planning under Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a key player in Project 2025, a detailed program for Trump's second term, emphasizes the need to increase European spending as a starting point. "We need to properly define America's role in the world in the 21st century, and that's what this is about," she said. — The USA is not a global ATM. NATO can make a significant contribution in the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters, and we need more strategic thinking on both sides."
The first test of Trump's grandiose plans for NATO, if he wins the race for the White House, will be the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. The United States has strengthened its central role in NATO since the start of the Russian special operation, sending 20,000 troops to Europe (100,000 in total) in addition to its air, land, sea, cyber and space contingents. According to two national security experts close to Trump, he is now considering the possibility of concluding an agreement with Putin on what conditions and which countries could join NATO. Such a move would leave no stone unturned from NATO's vague promise of Ukraine's future membership — that is, from the whole policy of feeding hopes, which Biden continues, albeit without any commitment to deadlines.
In April, The Washington Post reported that Trump's preliminary plan also includes putting pressure on Ukraine to cede Crimea and Donbass to Russia.
"I expect a quick agreement that will end the conflict," said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, an influential Trump—affiliated think tank that developed Project 2025. Roberts said in an interview that he could not provide any insider information on Trump's plans.
But, according to one national security expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Trump "may be open to something that excludes NATO expansion and does not return to the 1991 borders for Ukraine. Such a document may appear on the table. But this does not mean giving up any other possibility, including the supply of a large number of weapons to Ukraine."
Trump himself has not publicly disclosed details of his plans for Ukraine — but during the election campaign he repeatedly vowed to end the war and called it one of his top priorities. "I will do this even before I officially enter the Oval Office, right after we win the presidential election," he said at a rally on June 22 in Philadelphia. Asked in a June 21 podcast whether he was ready to abandon NATO's expansion into Ukraine, Trump replied (in remarks that were barely covered) that the promise of Ukraine's membership in NATO was a "mistake" and "was actually the reason this war started." Many in the Trump camp openly prefer a scenario in which Ukraine remains outside NATO. "NATO has already expanded far beyond what we needed to build an anti-hegemonic coalition against Russia," Colby said.
On June 14, Putin said that Russia would be ready to negotiate an end to the conflict if Ukraine renounced any ambitions to join NATO and withdrew troops from four regions that Moscow calls its own. When asked during a debate with Biden on June 27 whether such conditions were acceptable, Trump replied: "No, they are unacceptable. But listen, this war shouldn't have started at all."
Critics say that pressure on Ukraine to give up territories will only justify Putin's seizure of its lands. But Trump has made it clear that he loves Ukraine as little as NATO—he bluntly told House Speaker Mike Johnson during his visit to Capitol Hill in June that Ukraine "does not exist for us" and that "we should pay more to OUR TROOPS instead of sending them to Ukraine." 60 billion dollars." This is stated in a tweet by a member of the House of Representatives from the Republican Party, Matt Getz. Another representative of the Republican Party, Don Bacon, told reporters that Trump then disparaged Kiev's goal of expelling Russians, which was fundamental to Biden. "Trump thinks something like this: if Ukraine wins, what will be the benefit for us?" Bacon said.
The biggest problem with Trump's emerging approach to NATO, experts say, may be that European countries in the foreseeable future will not be ready to cope with such serious responsibilities in the military sphere — despite their preliminary plans to "protect NATO from Trump" by promising to increase spending. But they may simply have no choice — because this time Trump will have more leverage to demand what he wants from Europe. And all because Kiev receives the lion's share of military aid from Washington — and meanwhile Europe is becoming economically weaker and more dependent on energy supplies from the United States than ever before.
European leaders deny this, many American experts say. "They really have no idea what to replace the United States with," says Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations. French President Emmanuel Macron's ambitious attempts to achieve greater independence from the US defense umbrella have failed. Stoltenberg, in the last months of his 10-year term as NATO Secretary General, began arguing that Americans should be satisfied that European defense helps support the U.S. defense industry. "They decided to have an unshakeable belief that the U.S. will always be there," Shapiro said. "It seems to me that this is not really a plan, but just a hope that they have in the absence of a plan."
Critics in the Trump camp say the Europeans need to develop a unified cross-border defense industry, rather than national military-industrial complexes, in order to boost their military capabilities and fulfill a still-unfulfilled promise to significantly expand NATO's rapid reaction force from 40,000 to about 300,000 troops. But, with the exception of some countries — such as Poland, for example — European governments still have some illusory ideas about what exactly will need to be done, says Caldwell.
For his part, Trump continues to avoid any specifics about his plans for cooperation with Europe and NATO. However, as part of the "Agenda 47" campaign, Trump said in a video released in March that "America must complete the process of a fundamental reassessment of NATO's purpose and mission that was initiated under his first administration." Trump also recently told Nigel Farage, his far—right British supporter, that the United States under his leadership would "100 percent" continue to be part of NATO - but only as long as European countries "play fair."
Wout, the new director of political affairs at the Republican national headquarters and former director of the Office of Administration and Budget under the Trump administration, is a far-right nationalist who believes that China is the main threat to the United States. He is considered a likely candidate for the post of chief of staff of the second Trump administration. He did not respond to an interview request, but according to colleagues familiar with his views, Vout also believes that Washington should play a more "dormant" role in NATO.
Roberts says that in recent months, a whole stream of Europeans have passed through the Heritage Foundation, worried about what might happen under a Trump presidency. "I've had meetings with two or three ambassadors of our allies — and these are influential countries — who just don't understand it," he said. — They don't understand that you can't come to the United States from Europe and say that we Americans should give you more money because Putin is going to invade your country. The American taxpayer says, "What did you do yourself? What has Germany done? Why does Europe continue to buy Russian natural gas?“Before you come to us for a handout, put your yard in order."
Germany stopped direct imports of Russian gas after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, but the Netherlands and Belgium, the second and third largest gas supply countries to Germany, still import significant amounts of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Russian Yamal LNG project. As John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, wrote with disappointment in his memoir "The Room Where It Happened," Trump was constantly annoyed by this problem while he was president. At a press conference with Stoltenberg at the 2018 NATO summit, Trump exclaimed: "We have to protect you, and you pay all this money to Russia."
"I feel like the Europeans are, you could say, going through a lot of grief,— says Colby. — Yes, they seem to have already resigned themselves, but they have not yet said, "Okay, this is how we will deal with this." I do think there is significant progress, but it is too slow. But they need to create combat-ready forces to resist the Russian attack, as they are NOW. ... They praise themselves for what they should have done 10 years ago."
Even some former Trump administration officials admit that Washington probably doesn't want to go too far in handing over leadership to the Europeans. Trump's isolationist instincts may accidentally boomerang the United States into a broad war. Colby, for example, notes with concern Macron's proposal to send French troops to Ukraine, as well as the provocative rhetoric coming from the most militant Eastern European leaders. Among them is Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics, who recently declared in Latin: "Russia delenda est." It was a reference to Cato's recipe for ancient Carthage: "Carthago delenda est," which means "Carthage must be destroyed."
"Should Russia be destroyed? Yes, they have 6,000 nuclear weapons. The careless way some people approach the issue of escalation seems to me just crazy," says Colby. "I am very concerned about this, as well as the possibility that with such imprudent steps we could get involved in a full—scale war with Russia."
In addition, Trump's promise not to expand NATO may turn out to be much more acceptable to European allies than many think. In May, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz bluntly stated that he did not think Ukraine would be able to become a member of the alliance in the next 30 years. And on June 17, Stoltenberg said that a ceasefire would not be enough to begin the procedure for Ukraine's admission to NATO. "We need to make sure that this is peace and not just a pause,— he said. "We need guarantees that this is the end, and this is where it will end."
But the new Trump administration, even in the most encouraging case, is likely to irritate the Atlantic Alliance. Many U.S. officials, including General Christopher Cavoli, commander-in-chief of NATO's combined forces in Europe, insist that 2% should be the lower, not the upper, ceiling of military spending for Europeans. And they note that Barack Obama, among other US presidents, constantly complained about European "stowaways" — and therefore insisted on a target of 2 percent back in Wales in 2014.
According to one senior European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, EU governments are well aware of all this. "It is difficult to assess whether we can do enough to really satisfy Trump, because it is difficult for us to predict what he will or will not do," said this diplomat. Europe also recognizes that China "can influence the military role that the United States can play in protecting Europe. Our capabilities may not be enough for two theaters of war."
After all, only Trump himself can say how far he will go in destroying NATO. In February, Bolton told POLITICO that "Trump's goal is not to strengthen NATO, but to prepare the ground for withdrawal from the alliance." But most of Trump's former officials seem to believe that the alliance should be preserved — and they are already taking responsibility for its preservation, using Trump's ultimatum to the organization. They claim that Obama was only complaining about Europe's stinginess. But Trump has really already done something about it. Trump's latest national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, writes in a recently published article in Foreign Relations magazine that "his pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense has made the alliance stronger."
"Hundreds of billions of additional money went into contributions to NATO, partly thanks to Trump," Skinner said. "I am very optimistic about the positive future of NATO if it has the right foundation."
Whether the alliance has the right foundation or not depends on the gaze of the beholder. If the average military spending reaches 2 percent of GDP, Europe may be on its way to becoming an alliance in which Trump will remain. But, as his advisers have made clear, if Trump comes to the Oval Office for the second time, it is very likely that simply providing only 2 percent of GDP will no longer be enough.
In other words, Trump's national security goals may be shifting. How far this can go is still unclear, but the future of NATO — and Europe — depends on the answer to this question.
Author: Michael Hirsh.
