Search your feelings: Whose approach, Obama’s or Trump’s, is more likely to result in NATO members ponying up more for their collective defense? (And yes, it was under Obama that the 2 percent target become more than just a purely rhetorical goal.)
I will not here contend that Trump’s European vacation was some kind of Bob Corkerian demonstration of “near perfection.” Regardless of whether you believe NATO should exist (I am that lonely libertarian who does), it does, and as such the other partners in this alliance were vocally anxious to hear assurances that the new anti-multilaterialist president still believes in the foundational commitment to collective defense. Trump pointedly refused to do so. And just one year after complaining that “We’ve had a president who dislikes our friends and bows to our enemies,” Trump tilted his head downward to receive a medal from the king of Saudi Arabia, then days later upbraided our closest allies for not being “fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” in a speech during which he praised Saudi King Salman as “a wise man who wants to see things get much better rapidly.”
But if Trump proves to be the U.S. president who successfully encourages the European members of a mostly European alliance to take a leading role in the defense and foreign policy considerations along the borders of Europe, those ends should be considered a success, even if the means smell weird. Too much responsibility for global affairs has accrued in Washington over the years, leading to the corruptions of both domestic power and international powerlessness. It has ban far too easy for the common Parisian to lay blame for the world’s ills on the doorstep of the one country that will act when all others choose not to. And for all of Russia’s meddling beyond its borders, the bulk of it has been in its own Near Abroad, and/or on the continent of Europe. I for one am heartened to see a Frenchman at the front of that dispute.
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