Dan’s latest Daily Mail column looks at the fraying of NATO in the heat of the Iran War.
My latest Daily Mail column looks at the fraying of NATO in the heat of the Iran War, as both Trump and the leading Europeans talk out of both sides of their mouths about whether Europe supports our goals and whether we need their help:
Born in 1949 to counter Soviet expansion in Europe, NATO still makes sense as an anti-Russian pact. . . . But when it comes to the Middle East — that’s a different story.
Most European countries are openly hostile to Israel and dread being seen as anti-Muslim. Starmer’s political coalition depends upon many Muslim voters who may loathe the Jewish state. And French foreign policy since the fifteenth century has sought alignment with Muslim governments; King Francis I shocked Christian Europe by signing a treaty with the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in 1536, setting France on a course it has charted ever since.
Trump, for his part, thinks the Europeans are freeloading moochers. . . . For a guy who thinks in transactional terms, accusing someone of not paying your bills is the greatest insult.
If Europe is allergic to NATO military involvement in the Middle East, it should reconsider its own dependence upon oil and gas shipped through the Strait and the region’s other chokepoints, as well as its export trade that ships in the opposite direction.
Noah has more on Trump’s hunt for allies, and you can also read Jim on France and Italy trying to cut separate deals with Iran, Michael on why the Europeans have a right to feel slighted, and Steven Wills this morning on the military case for fewer rather than more warships in clearing the Strait of Hormuz. Josh Trevino has some more pungent thoughts at the Spectator on why both sides of the Atlantic, but especially the Europeans, need to start thinking in terms of their common interests in defeating the Iranian regime and reopening free navigation of the seas.
That gets to the two fundamental questions: Do the member nations of NATO see the organization as a true community of interests, or simply a set of bilateral deals that require continual renegotiation? And is that community of interests tied to a common global vision and order, or is it narrowly an alliance against Russian territorial aggression in Europe?
Finland’s President Alexander Stubb understands Trump better than many of his European peers, and also has sound reasons of history and geography to see NATO principally as a bulwark against Russia. Stubb has been arguing for a deal that speaks Trump’s language: European support in the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for firmer American commitments to back Ukraine. But even Stubb’s own navy says that its minesweepers are only suitable for service in the Baltic Sea. And even if European leaders trust commitments from this White House anymore, Trump will doubtless grumble at a Ukraine-aid deal that is apt to be used by European governments less as a winning chit for Ukraine than to let Europe off the hook for its own contributions.
But if NATO devolves into a more bluntly transactional partnership, expect more proposals like Stubb’s going forward.