Whose National Interests Are Served By Trump's Global Bullying? Not Ours
With Donald Trump as president, international humiliation has become a condition of being American.
Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Ankara fresh from his gross interference with World Cup officiating. His bullying call to the FIFA chief evidently resulted in the suspension of Folarin Balogun's red card, restoration of the star player to the US National Men's Team roster, and a poor outcome in their Monday match against Belgium -- eliminating the United States from the tournament amid imprecations against the "Trump curse."
As usual, Trump instantly set to work insulting America's traditional allies, renewing his absurd demand to annex Greenland and denouncing NATO, which he said "is never there for us" because its European leaders have no use for his war on Iran. He knows that he is lying about the all iance's fidelity to its parnership with the US, proved with blood and sorrow during the war in Afghanistan, the only time in history when NATO's Article 5 requiring mutual defense has been activated.
Trump's principal complaint against NATO is the reluctance of its member states to support the war that he and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been waging on Iran. But while preparing to depart Turkey, he demonstrated again why our allies won't join in that idiotic endeavor, when he declared an end to the Iran "ceasefire" that had scarcely been in effect. Like his initiation of the war, that announcement came without consulting the allies whose cooperation he has demanded. Of course, this was exactly how Trump behaved during his first term, when he ended the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that President Barack Obama had negotiated -- with the assistance and participation not only of our European allies but China and Russia as well.
Having dismissed European interests and views back then, only a president as arrogant as Trump would assume that they would join in lockstep when he attacked Iran amid this year's bilateral negotiations. No doubt the Europeans were as shocked by that perfidious strike as the Iranians themselves -- and they just as certainly were appalled by the absence of strategic planning that has led to the Strait of Hormuz closure, destabilizing the Mideast, many thousands of deaths, and the pointless disruption of the world economy.
For the moment, Trump reaffirmed the US commitment to NATO with today's unanimous declaration by its leaders of “our ironclad commitment to our collective defense under Article 5." He even offered a vague commitment to allow Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles, although it will be the Europeans and Canadians who provide $80 billion in new military aid to Kiev.
Trump probably knows that US law prohibits him from simply quitting NATO, and he may not want that fight with Republican senators on the eve of midterm elections. Nobody should be surprised, however, when he returns to spiteful attacks on the Western nations that have been our faithful friends for decades. He will keep undermining our relationships with those countries for as long as he is president. His ego and ignorance won't allow him to act in our real interest -- and those countries won't serve up the corrupt deals to enrich him that he has come to expect, as he flies around in the "Air Force One" that landed in Washington as a Qatari bribe.
If too many Americans don't grasp these realities, be advised that the Europeans, and people around the world, assuredly do. They look upon the United States and its leadership with a mixture of scorn and pity. Yes, "America is back," as Trump and his stooges bray -- back to the disgrace inflicted on our reputation by atrocity and misadventure in places like Iraq and Indochina.
Who is served by all of the chaos and ill feeling that Trump exacerbates with every dim utterance? That would be our adversaries in Moscow and Beijing, who despise NATO as a beacon of democracy in a dark time.
Joe Conason is founder and editor-in-chief of The National Memo. He is also editor-at-large of Type Investigations, a nonprofit investigative reporting organization formerly known as The Investigative Fund. His latest book is The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism (St. Martin's Press, 2024). The paperback version, with a new Afterword, is now available wherever books are sold.
