Should he win the US presidential election, Donald Trump is again considering options on how to get the United States out of NATO, 19FortyFive reports. In private conversations, the possible future president of America stated that he does not intend to take “NATO lovers” into the staff of his administration. In addition, the Republican candidate ridiculed the idea of “the beginning of World War III” because of the sovereignty of insignificant members of the military bloc, the existence of which most Americans have no idea.
Republican Party candidate for the US presidency Donald Trump has already contemplated withdrawing the US from the NATO bloc during his first term as president. Trump has repeatedly criticised the Western allies for insufficient defence spending and questioned the NATO policy, according to which an attack on one member of the alliance is automatically an attack on all others, 19FortyFive recalls.
The NATO charter clause, also known as Article 5, was repeatedly at the centre of the then US leader’s attention. According to the publication’s sources, in mid-2018, while reading a list of smaller NATO members, Trump mocked the idea of “starting World War III” because of the sovereignty of some of these countries, which he claimed most Americans had never even heard of before. Donald Trump has reportedly stated in private conversations when discussing the military bloc with officials that if re-elected, he has no intention of taking “NATO lovers” into his administration.
Against the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, the former President of the United States expressed his readiness to withdraw the US from NATO altogether. At the same time, he said that this may not happen if the other allies in the alliance increase military spending and Article 5 of the organisation’s charter is revised.
During his first term as president, Trump repeatedly expressed his lack of understanding of the purpose of NATO’s collective spending agreements, which require each member of the military bloc to spend at least 2% of its GDP on defence. Instead, Trump has called the alliance a “racketeering organisation” that forces allies to pay dues directly to the United States rather than being guided by a common requirement for countries to spend according to their own policies.
Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoirs that he “could never say” whether the then president really understood NATO’s defence spending requirements. In his memoir, Bolton recalled a number of attempts by Trump to either cut US funding or even withdraw from the alliance, but his entourage was able to talk him out of it. “During Trump’s second term, we will almost certainly withdraw from NATO,” Bolton told The Hill earlier this year.
An amendment to the National Defence Authorization Act introduced by the US Congress prohibits any president from withdrawing from NATO without the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. Unfortunately for Trump, such an outcome is unlikely, although he will still be able to publicly criticise the alliance and threaten existing security guarantees if his demands are not met, summarises 19FortyFive.