In recent weeks, the Trump administration has renewed its attacks on Europe and threatened to leave NATO because its members refused to support the United States and Israel in their war with Iran. Moreover, on May 1, the Department of Defense announced that 5,000 troops would withdraw from U.S. bases in Germany over the next year.
Despite its rhetorical outbursts against NATO, the truth is the Trump administration still very much wants to keep Europe dependent on Washington, unhelpfully perpetuating America’s entanglement in the region.
President Donald Trump has mocked NATO as a “paper tiger” that can’t be trusted, declared that leaving the alliance was now “beyond reconsideration,” said European leaders would “have to learn how to fight for [themselves],” and even revived his claims about Greenland.
But his fury makes little sense. Indeed, NATO allies have often eschewed participation in their fellow members’ interventions in other countries when they fail to meet the criterion for collective defense. When the United States and Israel initiated hostilities against Iran in late February, the war fell outside the scope of NATO’s Article 5, which can only be invoked in the case of “armed attack” on the alliance. In any case, the article is not an automatic trigger for collective defense since it only requires alliance “to assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
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