POLITICO: Trump’s rage at Western ex-allies is binding them together — against him

The Americans give their name to NATO – not “North Atlantic”, but “North American” (!) Treaty Organization

Leaders and defense officials have started hedging against the risk America will pull out of NATO, the bedrock of European security since 1949, POLITICO stresses.

Donald Trump’s anger at NATO allies for refusing to join the war against Iran has so far achieved one thing: uniting them against him.

In private, over intimate dinners, and on the sidelines of meetings in Brussels and elsewhere, European leaders and officials are discussing how to handle the U.S. president’s threats to quit NATO and what they would do if he followed through.

They now share the grim view that Trump's increasingly angry attacks on Britain, Spain, France and others confirm a fundamental breach in the transatlantic alliance. And while they aren't yet sure what the final answer should be, some countries are already looking to expand their defense and security arrangements to work around a broken NATO.

NATO “is paralyzed” and it was not Russians, but Americans!

“NATO is paralyzed — they can’t even have meetings,” said one European diplomat, like others granted anonymity to speak freely. “It's pretty clear NATO is already falling apart,” an EU official said, adding that Europe must urgently bolster its own defenses: “We can’t wait for it to be completely dead.”

The blunt assessment, drawn from POLITICO's interviews with 24 ministers, officials and diplomats, vividly depicts the shift in the postwar world order that Trump has done so much to bring about.

In recent days the Trump administration has plunged the military alliance into perhaps the deepest crisis of its 77-year history. The president and his team have vowed to reassess U.S. membership in NATO once the Iran war is over, in retaliation for the failure of their flakey European allies to join the conflict against Iran.

Trump himself has been happy to stoke the flames, calling NATO a "paper tiger" in an interview with The Telegraph.

America’s biggest gripe is the refusal of European powers such as Spain, the U.K. and France to let U.S. forces use their military bases or air space to conduct operations against Iran. In the month since the war began, Trump’s ire has only intensified in a stream of increasingly embittered posts flowing from his Truth Social media account.

For the Europeans, the question, as always, is how to protect themselves from the worst of it — and save what matters most.

Nordic table talk

In Helsinki last week, 10 European leaders met for a private dinner without their officials and aides in the intimate surroundings of the Mannerheim Museum, the home of Finland’s World War II leader Gustaf Mannerheim.

Amid the 1940s interiors, decorated with the former president’s hunting trophies, the leaders of countries including the U.K, Sweden, Finland and Norway held a frank discussion about the dire state of the transatlantic alliance. Trump’s stream of invective via social media is bad and getting worse, they all agreed.

But they resolved they couldn't consent to the U.S. president’s demands to join the fighting against Iran.

“We all want the war to end but we are not on the same page as the U.S.,” said one official briefed on the discussions. Trump wants NATO to help, but the leaders remain resistant because “most Europeans were not informed beforehand and the Gulf has nothing to do with NATO.” In Europe, conversely, the crisis is having a unifying effect: “These 10 countries have always been really close to each other but I would say they’re even closer now,” the official added.

The verdict of these governments, which include Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands, isn't restricted to Northern Europe.

In fact, what's remarkable about the international response to the war in Iran is how united European leaders have been in their refusal to send military assets to join the American and Israeli bombing.

Trump has “destroyed” the transatlantic relationship and “unified” Europe in opposition to this war, one EU diplomat said. Another senior European government official said the Americans must now deal with their own mistake in attacking Iran.

Don’t mention the war

Among NATO officials there is private concern at the rupture in the alliance, along with some bafflement because the U.S. hasn't yet formally requested assistance from NATO in the Gulf. It’s not clear exactly what Washington wants, officials said.

Secretary General Mark Rutte has “irritated” some allies by resolutely sticking to his policy of refusing to criticize America and maintaining there’s no problem with NATO, according to one European diplomat.

In private, officials concede the relentless criticism from the U.S. inevitably weakens NATO because at its heart, the alliance is an idea. Article 5 of NATO’s founding treaty states that members will be ready to defend any member who is attacked.

The moment that promise is questioned, NATO loses its potency as a deterrent against Russian aggression. Trump has questioned the idea so often he has turned doubting NATO into official policy.

Yet for Europeans there is still no single answer to how to restore NATO's credibility, or what to replace it with if the worst happens.

Back to Brussels

And then there’s the EU.

For years, NATO’s supporters have argued that Brussels must stay away from defense policy to avoid competing with or undermining NATO, which has been the cornerstone of European security since 1949.

But one EU official said the bloc was now “extremely active” on defense given Trump’s verbal battering of NATO.

Trump’s upending of the alliance prompted the EU to designate €150 billion in loans for countries to invest in their defenses, while Brussels is also “exploring” Article 42.7 of the EU treaty, a mutual defense clause, another EU official said. A new economic security plan is due this summer. “We need to do things to make sure we're ready,” the official added.

Ex-U.S. allies work on Plan B for Hormuz Strait if… Trump walks away

More than 40 US allies met to discuss plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, in a signal to President Donald Trump of the deep concern across the international community about the crisis in the waterway triggered by his war on Iran, Bloomberg reports.

The UK convened nations from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, as well as Australia and Canada, to consider diplomatic outreach to Tehran and potential sanctions if it did not agree to unblock the critical shipping lane for global energy supplies.

The virtual meeting appeared intended to demonstrate the shared position of dozens of American allies that he should not walk away from the conflict without finding a solution for the strait, as the president has repeatedly threatened to do. Attendees fear that Trump will wind up his operation in Iran without a plan to reopen the waterway, leaving it to them to deal with the fallout.

The international community was clear the US needed to include a solution for Hormuz in ceasefire talks with Iran, people familiar with the discussions said. Still, the virtual meeting showed the coalition of countries deem it necessary to begin preparations for having to reopen the strait without the US.

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi, who participated on the call, also “underscored the importance of each country making its utmost effort to ensure a stable energy supply,” according to the statement.

Military planners from the coalition of countries will meet next week to discuss how their naval assets could be deployed to help police and de-mine the strait after the fighting has stopped. There is little appetite among the vast majority of the coalition to attempt to reopen the waterway by force because they don’t see that a viable solution and do not think the crisis can be resolved without the agreement of Iran.

...Former Western allies of the United States fail to understand a simple fact: Trump is personally interested in seeing the closure of the Strait of Hormuz primarily hurt by European and Asian economies, the United States’ current competitors in the Global Economy.

Iran will not open the strait without Trump and Israel's capitulation, or without Iran's own defeat following potential nuclear strikes from Tel Aviv and Washington.

Both the first and second options do not seem easily implementable in the near future. It means, the Gulf will be closed, which is entirely consistent with Trump’s plans to inflict maximum damage on his former allies, now competitors.

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