Eurasia Press & News
Donald Trump’s lashing out at NATO allies over the Iran War is as dangerous as it is unjustified.
In the midst of US involvement in a war against Iran, President Donald Trump has decided to double down on previous public expressions of disregard and distrust toward NATO. Trump has threatened to withdraw the United States from NATO several times since his reelection to the White House. His repeated jibes at the alliance have raised concerns among European defense experts and government officials.
Former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder recently noted that “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defense.” French President Emmanuel Macron indicated on April 2 that, in his view, Trump was undermining NATO with his repeated threats to withdraw from the alliance. Raising new fears of American abandonment on the part of European leaders, Trump, in various interviews and social media posts within a few days, said that the United States “will REMEMBER” France’s refusal to assist in the Iran War, that NATO was a “paper tiger,” and that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that, too, by the way.”
The most recent presidential broadside against NATO reflected Trump’s frustration with European allies who chose not to involve themselves in the war against Iran and refused to provide political support for the military actions. But this hesitancy among European allies should not have surprised the US leadership. Neither NATO as an alliance nor individual European governments were consulted prior to the decision to go to war, nor were most even informed until the operation was already in progress.
Further to the issue of NATO support, Trump’s address to the nation on April 1 simply assumed that the United States would wind up its military operations within several weeks and turn the problem of unblocking shipping in the Strait of Hormuz over to European countries and others. In addition, Western European governments have strong public support for putting distance between themselves and the war in Iran. Popular majorities in nearly every country oppose the US-Israeli campaign, and European opposition to the war is enhanced by Trump’s personal unpopularity on that side of the Atlantic.
An additional element in the split between Trump and NATO was the Russian interpretation of its implications for the war in Ukraine and Russian strategy writ large. A prolonged US commitment to war in the Middle East could deplete the availability of military assets that would otherwise be available to sustain Ukrainian forces in their fight against Russia. The global spike in gas and oil prices was an obvious boon to the Russian economy and, from the standpoint of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an unwelcome distraction for European leaders from the priority of supporting Ukraine. Russia also took advantage of the war to reinforce its support for Iran by providing targeting information for Iranian missile attacks against Israel and other regional states. Russia and Iran had already been sharing technology and know-how with respect to drone warfare even prior to the launch of military operations against Tehran.
To some extent, the volatility in the Trump administration’s approach to NATO reflected the president’s frustration at his inability to broker a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia. President Putin viewed Russia’s war as existential and refused to acknowledge that there was any distinction between Ukrainian and Russian cultures, let alone sovereignties. The Ukrainians responded in kind, resisting Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory with creative use of drone technology that can strike a variety of targets deep within Russian territory, including bomber bases and energy infrastructure.
Worse for Putin, his invasion in 2022, preceded by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, refocused NATO on its primary mission of deterrence and defense in Europe as opposed to “out of the area” operations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the formerly Cold War neutral states, Sweden and Finland, were added to NATO’s membership as a result of Russia’s attempted coup de main against Kyiv that turned into the longest and most destructive war in Europe since World War II. Caught in a trap of his own making, Putin continued to pour troops and material into the battlefields of Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine in order to support a more favorable negotiating position, should productive negotiations ever materialize.
Given Trump’s propensity for rearranging the deck chairs on foreign policy via Truth Social memoranda, it is conceivable that he will tone down the anti-NATO rhetoric once he has decided on a strategy to wind down the US military campaign in Iran. The process of securing the Strait of Hormuz will likely involve some participation by European and other countries. Almost nobody benefits from continued bottlenecks in global shipping of oil and other vital commodities.
Regardless of the outcome in Iran, the United States needs NATO, and NATO needs the United States. Without the United States as the indispensable leading partner, NATO Europe has insufficient nuclear or conventional deterrence against further Russian aggression. This assertion implies no disregard for the steps that US European allies have already taken since 2022 to improve the quality of their armed forces and military-industrial complexes.
It is instead a recognition that the unique American nuclear deterrent and conventional war-fighting capabilities, supported by European determination to resist further Russian aggression, create a global as well as a regional deterrent for Russia and its partners (China, Iran, and North Korea). This benefits not only NATO and Europe but also the rest of the world. On the other hand, a divided and internally disputatious NATO invites further aggression in and outside of Europe.
