With the world very much beating on the far-flung doors of U.S. influence around the globe while hot spots await only a live spark to become regional — at minimum — conflagrations, now might be an impolitic moment for Donald Trump to do what he’s done.
Twice recently, the former president and presumptive presidential re-nominee of the Republican Party has treated certain members of NATO like tenants behind on their rent. And, to the alarm of many on both sides of the Atlantic, he indicated he would be OK with Russia’s Vladimir Putin coming to collect the bill.
“NATO was busted until I came along,” Trump said at a rally in Conway, South Carolina. “I said, ‘Everybody’s gonna pay.’ They said, ‘Well, if we don’t pay, are you still going to protect us?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ They couldn’t believe the answer.”
Trump said “one of the presidents of a big country” at one point asked him whether the US would still defend the country if they were invaded by Russia even if they “don’t pay.”
“No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling that president. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
That was Saturday. Wednesday — Valentine’s Day — Trump still had no love for NATO members who failed to meet their financial commitment (2 percent of GDP) to defense spending.
The pouncing has been widespread and immediate. Nikki Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations (talk about entanglements) and the last active GOP challenger, scolded her rival on national TV.
“Don’t take the side of a thug who kills his opponents,” Ms. Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “Don’t take the side of someone who has gone in and invaded a country, and half a million people have died or been wounded because of Putin. Don’t take the side of someone who continues to lie. I dealt with Russia every day. The last thing we ever want to do is side with Russia.”
Saying, “History offers a clue,” Vice President Kamala Harris suggested Trump was inviting aggression against allies. Similarly, on X, former President Barack Obama — one to talk — recommended against “a world that is more chaotic … where dictators feel emboldened and our allies wonder if they can count on us.”
One imagines Susan Rice feeding them b*tch-a*s comments of suitable disquiet. But the critique from President Biden sounded just like Scranton Joe.
“The whole world heard it and the worst thing is he means it,” Biden added. Biden said … “when America gives its word, it means something,” and called Trump’s comments sowing doubt about its commitments “un-American.”
Biden said of Trump: “He doesn’t understand that the sacred commitment that we’ve given works for us as well.”
If you’re among those taking Trump literally (but not quite seriously), it’s easy to reach those conclusions. If you’re in the other camp, you hear Trump as the narrator of timeless parables, and the one about deadbeat nations mooching off American might is one of your favorites.
Trump’s stated position in this matter may indeed qualify as “un-American” in today’s rapidly shrinking world, but it would have been perfectly patriotic from the nation’s inception through the morning of December 7, 1941. In his 1796 farewell address, George Washington cautioned his young country against foreign entanglements, and Americans took him at his word for 150 years. Our alignments were of the sort Washington would have approved: temporary and for emergency purposes only.
Does this mean our ancestors who resisted sending their sons across oceans to quell the bellicosity of nations strange to them weren’t proper Americans? The Father of Our Country advised otherwise. Or did the rise and violent spread of communism — and the West’s more-or-less united stand against it for more than a half-century — inalterably reset the calculus of what constitutes Americanism?
All of this recalls the “No pay, no spray” episode in rural Obion County in northwest Tennessee nearly 14 years ago. Paulette and Gene Cranick lost their home and their possessions, as well as three dogs and a cat, to a blaze while members of the South Fulton City Fire Department stood idly by.
While residents within incorporated South Fulton pay taxes to support fire services, the department requires neighbors outside the city limits to pay an annual $75 subscription fee. The Cranicks neglected to pony up in 2010, and watched with a mixture of chagrin, horror and fury as firefighters defended nearby homes while theirs was reduced to cinders.
There was, briefly, a national discussion about whether the South Fulton fire chief’s stand-down order was appropriate, the camps lining up pretty much along the left-right divide. Everyone who claimed the chief had been inhumane was, of course, wrong.
The reality was, is, and always shall be that everyone wants free stuff, or, failing that, stuff at a discount. This is especially true when it comes to stuff we don’t want to think about, like fire fees and national defense. Enablers are as much to blame as those who dodge the bill.
Today’s upshot is encouraging. Even as Trump seemingly brandishes olive branches at the Moscow threat, leaders of pivotal European nations declared their intention to muscle up.
PARIS (AP) — The governments of Poland, France and Germany vowed Monday to make Europe a security and defense power with a greater ability to back Ukraine, as fears grow that former U.S. President Donald Trump might return to the White House and allow Russia to expand its aggression on the continent.
The foreign ministers of the three countries met in the Paris suburb of La Celle-Saint-Cloud to have talks about Ukraine, amid other issues. They discussed reviving the so-called Weimar Triangle, a long dormant regional grouping that was designed to promote cooperation between France, Germany and Poland.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who met with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin on Monday, said he wanted to “revitalize” his nation’s relations with its key European partners.
“There is no reason why we should be so clearly militarily weaker than Russia, and therefore increasing production and intensifying our cooperation are absolutely indisputable priorities,” Tusk said in arguing for the European Union to become “a military power” in its own right.
If you’re already a Magadonian, you’ve already acknowledged Trump’s genius unfolding in real time. See? Europeans are dancing to his tune.
The rest of us, especially those who look forward to the earliest possible end to the Biden nightmare, recognize this for what it is: Trump being impossibly impulsive, unpredictable, harsh, and more than a little bit crazy.
But with European leaders already starting to do his bidding, this looks like one of those times Trump is crazy … like a fox.
