Donald Trump has, appropriately, drawn mass criticism for his recent interview with the New York Times, in which he declined to commit to supporting NATO countries against invasion. Read the whole thing; it is, to say the least, very damning. But one has to ask: are his views really so far off the American mainstream?
Let’s make one thing clear first: NATO is a binding treaty obligation. Once the United States enters into a covenant of such magnitude with its fellow member states, it is legally and morally bound to its provisions. Not to mention, of course, that a stance like Trump’s could well mean the subjugation of the Baltic states, with their substantial Russian-minority populations, to a Vladimir Putin’s aggressive foreign policy.
But the fact that the United States has such treaty obligations does not mean that those obligations enjoy widespread support among the American people. Indeed, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that anything resembling a majority of Americans would support going to war with Russia over a violation of, say, Estonian sovereignty. Americans probably don’t care about Estonia. I doubt that many could even place it on a map.
According to a recent Pew survey, 56 percent of Americans believe that the United States should use military force to defend NATO allies against Russia. (Support is much lower in Europe — only 47 percent of French, 40 percent of Italians, and 38 percent of Germans believe the same. Interestingly, though a median of 48 percent of citizens of NATO member states support using military force against a Russian incursion on a NATO country, a full 68 percent believe the United States would intervene. There appears to be a widespread sense among NATO member states that the Americans will pick up the slack where the Europeans are unwilling to do so.) But it is possible that this poll is picking up the wrong metrics and therefore failing to address the root question: Sure, Americans like NATO, but how many Americans know that Estonia is in NATO, that it borders Russia and is the home to a substantial Russian minority, or even that it even exists?
It seems unlikely that when most Americans conjure up a mental image of “NATO,” they are envisioning the whole thing. For most Americans, NATO means the powers of Western Europe, with which the United States has been aligned for decades — France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany. If France or the U.K. were attacked or otherwise violated by Russia, I have no doubt that Americans would widely support retaliation, even at the risk of nuclear war. But their support for such retaliation would have nothing to do with the legal bonds of the NATO alliance; rather, it would originate in longstanding cultural affinities and a sense of shared companionship between the U.S. and those countries.
No such bonds exist between the United States and Estonia, or Latvia or Lithuania. As such, it is possible that American passions would not be stirred by a Russian incursion over the Estonian border. If you polled Americans on their willingness to go to war to defend the sovereignty of European countries, I’m willing to bet the geographic trend would be a striking one: wide levels of support for the U.K. and France, slightly lower for Germany and Italy, lower still for Poland and the Czech Republic, and virtually non-existent for the Baltic nations. Trump’s dismissive remarks about NATO obligations may provoke consternation among foreign-policy wonks — and it should; this was a big moment — but it seems unlikely that it will cost him any votes.