With NATO's foreign ministers and its Secretary-General in town last week to celebrate the Alliance's 70th birthday, the best that could be said regarding their Washington appearance was that they departed with feathers largely unruffled. Previous high-level meetings with President Trump have left our European partners deeply concerned about the U.S. commitment to NATO’s collective security guarantee

  • Mercifully, there was no repeat of the presidential explosions that characterized the first two high-level meetings of alliance leaders.   Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s speech before Congress Wednesday, and the invite from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that led to it, reflected an encouraging bi-partisan support for the historic alliance.

But all is not well in Brussels.

  • An alliance built on principles of liberal, open, free-market democracy is suffering from an erosion of these principles in Hungary, Poland and Turkey; there appears to be no end in sight for what is emerging as creeping authoritarianism in all but name in each of these key NATO member countries.
  • Defense spending as a percentage of GDP in far too many NATO members remains pathetically inadequate; only 6 of 29 NATO members, besides the U.S., currently achieve the 2% spending goal; Germany, by far the wealthiest member, still finds it politically difficult to significantly raise their burden-sharing totals.
  • And worryingly for the long-term, there is no unified strategy to deal with China – strategically or technologically. As one observer of the European scene recently noted, Russia has tried for decades to divide the alliance; but “they have flipped almost nobody. China’s just starting to put in real effort, and is well on its way. Italy is the canary in the coal mine!”

 

There are some encouraging developments for sure: most importantly, NATO’s #1 contemporary security mission, deterrence of a revanchist Russia, has been a success; and undoubtedly bowing to Trump blasts, most countries have begun to boost defense spending.

In the end, though, what is so remarkable about where NATO finds itself at 70 is summarized starkly in a report released last week by Harvard’s Belfer Center. The two authors, both former Ambassadors to NATO, Nick Burns and retired lieutenant general Doug Lute, summarized the alliance situation as follows: “While NATO has strategic challenges to meet, the single greatest threat is the absence of strong, principled American presidential leadership for the first time in its history.” Needless to say, this is a devastating critique, from two public servants who have served at the highest levels in administrations of both parties.

After watching the president for 26 months in office, it’s not difficult to explain Trump’s deep skepticism of NATO: from Trump’s perspective, Europe is no longer a vital security interest; for an Administration committed to an “interest” focused (vice “values” focused) national security strategy, Europe consequently has been an early causality.

  • Further, the president continues to be enthralled with the philosophy of Steve Bannon that concludes that membership in ANY international organization entails a “loss of sovereignty.” Hence, despite the obvious strategic advantages that NATO membership offers, the Trump-Bannon view is that our commitments to that alliance are not worth the “costs” that membership entails.

While the president’s views toward Europe and NATO in particular might represent the “worst of times,” at least for the near term, the encouraging feature of our domestic political landscape is that support for the alliance remains strong despite the presidential body blows. And given the robust Congressional support that NATO enjoys, there should be no market-roiling decision by the president to exit from Brussels. That’s a small but important birthday gift as NATO turns 70.