Reuters
As a starting point in assessing this deliberate threat to the Europeans, it is worth citing in full Trump’s February 10 revelation at a campaign rally in the town of Conway, South Carolina. Here’s the verbatim passage:
«One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ ‘No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills».
Joe Biden, predictably, lashed out at his rival: «Can you imagine a former president of the U.S. saying that? The whole world heard it».
At the NATO summit in Cardiff (Wales) in 2014, it was agreed that over the next 10 years all alliance members, without exception, would spend 2% of GDP or more on military spending. The Europeans were slow to honor their essentially contractual obligations. It was only Trump’s first coming that forced them to start funding, first and foremost, the purchase of new weapons from the United States.
In the wake of Trump’s threat, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a rebuttal to the Europeans’ improper compliance with the decisions of the Cardiff summit. «In total, they have added 450 billion extra for defense», said the former Norwegian prime minister, without specifying over what period, and mentioned the example of Poland, which willingly spends 4% of GDP on war preparations.
Such arguments can hardly change the mind of the stubborn and persistent former 45th president of the United States. The reason, according to his former national security adviser John Bolton, is that Trump is preparing the psychological ground for the implementation of the exit strategy from NATO.
Bolton, a neoconservative, said in an interview with Politico that he has unraveled his former patron’s secret plan. «When Trump complains that NATO allies are not spending enough on defense, he’s not complaining to get them to strengthen NATO. He’s using it to bolster his excuse to get out».
This inference prompted Politico (sold in 2021 for one billion dollars to the German media conglomerate Axel Springer SE) to spice up the interview with the headline: «John Bolton Is Certain Trump Really Wants to Blow Up NATO».
John Bolton, with his interpretation of Trump’s motives, seems to be closest to the truth, which lies in the strategic plan of a part of the American establishment, oriented to the former guest of the White House, to preserve the hegemony of the United States by unleashing not the Third World War, but a regional conflict, limited by the geographical boundaries of the Old World. But on the condition that this would be a large-scale clash between the North Atlantic Alliance and Russia without the direct involvement of the United States.
In order to implement this radical reversal, the US and its situational vassal Britain need to break free from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In the same days that Trump stabbed a poisoned dagger into NATO’s back, an article appeared in Britain’s Guardian containing two paragraphs that for the founding fathers of the military-political bloc in 1949 would have been akin to absolute treason:
«Article 5 of the NATO Charter — the promise to enter into confrontation if even one of its members is attacked — needs revision. And this is especially true now that the United States is increasingly inclined toward the Pacific, and the sense of political unity in Europe is steadily fading.
Today, the alliance has become a source of endless confrontation, as the protracted conflict demonstrates. No one can agree on anything. Europe must think about its security if the US leaves the bloc. Trump’s skepticism about the need to preserve NATO is justified».
To what extent Trump himself realizes that a U.S. withdrawal from NATO could bring war in Europe closer, rather than farther away, is difficult to say. Most likely, he is thinking and reasoning as an heir to the isolationists of the «old school», who believed that there was no point in spreading his forces to serve as a gendarme of the entire world.
Tellingly, in mid-2018, Donald Trump, in his second year in the Oval Office, read out a list of small NATO countries to a small circle of top officials, noting that his fellow citizens had never even heard of most of them. He then voiced his position: it makes no sense to start World War III by sending U.S. troops to any of these insignificant countries if they are attacked from the outside.
There is a justified version in the media space that the ongoing disputes between Republicans and Democrats on the Capitol over the allocation of $60 billion to the Kiev regime has the ulterior purpose of putting additional pressure on European allies and forcing them to shell out more money.
And now the protégé of the Rothschild financial empire, French President Emmanuel Macron announces that he has switched his country to a war economy. The phrase is worth little if you know the real content of this concept. One blogger, hiding under the nickname «Voice of Mordor», reacted to this news in a witty manner:
«Renault, Peugeot and Citroen factories produce armored cars, Dior and Chanel produce trinitrotoluene, hexogen and pyroxylin instead of perfume and cosmetics. Those same crusty French buns are sliced into portions and sent into dry rations for valiant French soldiers. Coffee in Montmartre now costs not eight, but 15 euros, and the Parisian bourgeois refuse the traditional morning croissants. No time for pleasures, because a war is ahead with the eastern barbarians, who want to deprive the French of a quiet and sated life».
The head of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defense and Armed Forces Committee, Cedric Perrin, who explained to his compatriots that France produces as many 155-mm shells per year as Ukraine spends in a few days.
Meanwhile, the propaganda campaign to accustom Europeans to what used to be called «the unthinkable» is in full swing. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and the chairman of NATO’s military committee, General Rob Bauer, recently almost in duet announced a «major war» with Russia.
The National Interest magazine published an article by the two authors on February 14. Maximilian Mayer, a professor at the University of Bonn, and Emilian Kavalski, a Bulgarian-Australian political scientist and professor at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, headlined the question, «Is Europe Still Relevant?». Their reflections were subordinated to the task of formulating a precept for accelerated militarization: «The EU must urgently focus on developing capabilities to defend the continent».
When reading the article, one gets the feeling that the first of the three pieces of advice from these experts is subordinated to the unspoken super-objective of staging a major war in Europe. The revision of the EU’s «strategy should focus on three central points. First, it needs to invest in innovation to assist the development of European economic resilience».
The emphasis is clearly on the second recommendation: «EU member states with significant defense capacities, such as France, Germany, and Italy, have yet to consider rearming and expanding their military-industrial capacities… On the other hand, some Eastern European countries, such as Poland and the Baltic nations, have already taken steps to strengthen their military capabilities».
In mid-February, the tabloid newspaper Bild announced that the Russian army was about to seize the Suwalki Gap, a small isthmus on the border of Lithuania and Poland adjacent to the Kaliningrad region, in order to occupy the Baltic states.
Matthew Karnitschnig, European correspondent for Politico, commented on the 45th former president’s latest verbal attack on the North Atlantic alliance member states: «At this point, it is almost irrelevant whether (Donald Trump) wins the U.S. election. Europe is left alone. The only question that the results of the vote will answer is how quickly NATO will disintegrate».
We should hardly expect this scenario to materialize in the near future. After all, it is not without reason that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently reminded that Washington and Brussels should be prepared for «a confrontation with Moscow that will last for decades».
When reading this prediction, there are vague doubts that Washington will like (and can afford) the maintenance of even a sluggish mode of confrontation with Moscow for the next decades. Bolton’s version that the most cunning and far-sighted strategists in the American elites are preparing the U.S. “for exit” from NATO is becoming more convincing. It is clear that this can happen only at a very convenient and opportune moment.