Is Donald Trump, who infamously called NATO “obsolete” during his first term as US President, really now the benevolent “daddy” of the Western military alliance? German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and other still-hopeful Atlanticists in Europe certainly seem to think so, after Trump this week agreed to sell five Patriot anti-aircraft systems to Ukraine through its European partners, ostensibly aligning himself with NATO’s agenda.
What’s more, Trump told the BBC in an interview that NATO is doing “much better”, indeed becoming “the opposite of” obsolete because of the increased defense spending pledges from most allies. In light of this, the US President, who ominously raised the arbitrary wording and “numerous definitions” of Article 5 ahead of last week’s NATO summit in The Hague, now apparently thinks “collective defense is fine”.
While the European NATO countries are exhaling with relief, the MAGA base — led by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon — smells betrayal and a return to American support for “forever wars”. Yet this moment is likely not Trump’s Atlanticist conversion, reportedly pushed by his Slovenian wife Melania. Rather, it is another useful example of the President’s policy of getting the world to focus on one hand, while the other is doing something different.
Earlier this year, there was general outrage about the US voting with Russia against a UN resolution condemning Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, and then exempting Russia from Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. Many interpreted these moves as evidence of the US President cozying up to his Russian counterpart. Yet a more likely explanation is that Trump was attempting a gesture of goodwill toward Russia, after decades of snubs and bitter grudges, to quickly bring the war to an end. Sometimes the best dealmakers need to cultivate relationships rather than use intimidation.
With that empathetic approach having failed, however, Trump now appears to be testing the waters for a new, more hardline strategy. By musing about the virtues of NATO, selling Patriots to Ukraine, and slapping 100% secondary tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and gas if a ceasefire is not reached within the next 50 days, he is taking what he now sees as the best approach — from an “America First” point of view — to stopping a dangerous and distracting war.
Neither MAGA world nor the European NATO countries seem to understand that Trump is a stone-cold pragmatist when it comes to foreign affairs. The US bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last month is another case in point. This operation did not, in fact, signal a neoconservative revival; instead, it was a deft way to avoid a ground invasion of Iran. By targeting Tehran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons, Trump effectively neutralized Israel’s argument and ambitions for a wider, highly destabilizing war in the region — one which America sooner or later would have been forced to join.
A blasphemous parallel might be drawn to Sweden’s Cold War prime minister Olof Palme, who marched with anti-Vietnam demonstrators to prevent the rise of a large Communist party to the Left of the Social Democrats and protect a clandestine military cooperation between Sweden and NATO. Rather brilliantly, Palme publicly condemned the very B52 bombers he counted on to save his own country in the event of a Soviet invasion.
In a similar way, Trump is oscillating between restraint and pro-war Atlanticism in whatever way he feels serves the interests of his nation on a particular day. We should all look at what the other hand is doing.
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