Despite all the threats and anger of President Donald Trump With allies refusing to help in the U.S. military campaign, his rhetoric has yet to be matched by any signs of concrete action. NATO diplomats, congressional and defense officials say the administration has not held the necessary discussions to withdraw from the nearly eighty-year-old alliance.
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The United States has not initiated any debates within NATO or issued specific directives on Washington’s role in the alliance, two NATO diplomats said. The Trump administration has not informed Capitol Hill of the impending troop withdrawal, a senior Senate official said. And Pentagon rumors of a U.S. withdrawal from the alliance are fading, a defense official said. “There’s no evidence that it’s real,” he said.
Trump could always make a surprise announcement during his address to the nation on Iran that would reimagine Washington’s role in the alliance. But even then, the path to NATO withdrawal would be littered with legal hurdles and likely outrage from hawkish congressmen who say the president must comply with a 2023 law that requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate before the United States can withdraw from NATO, Politico reports.
Some allies, who have watched Trump use American influence to seize Greenland and demand that Europeans buy American weapons, are wondering whether his comments contradict his attempt to get help in ending Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
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The president's rhetoric was designed to “force NATO allies to take some visible action,” including helping France and Britain with the strait, another NATO diplomat said.
Trump's recent statements about America's participation in NATO were extreme even by his standards.
“I would say it's not something that can be rethought,” he told The Telegraph. “NATO has never had an impact on me. I've always known they were a paper tiger.”
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Just hours after the interview was released, Finnish President Alexander Stubb — one of Trump's key European forecasters — said he had called the US president and had a “constructive discussion.”
Trump's latest comments have sparked a swift backlash, including a bipartisan statement from Senators Mitch McConnell (R-N.C.) and Chris Coons (D-N.C.), who categorically stated that the United States would remain in NATO and called the alliance the most successful defense pact in history.
Other top lawmakers pointed to the restrictions they imposed, which would require a two-thirds vote in the Senate or a separate act of Congress to withdraw the United States from NATO. That bill was cosponsored in the Senate by Trump's current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.
Trump can always break the law and withdraw from NATO without congressional approval, as he did with the treaty during his first presidency. In 2020, the president withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed the United States and 34 other countries to conduct unarmed overflight missions to monitor military buildups without notifying Capitol Hill.
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European officials are concerned that Trump might try a different approach: staying in the alliance but stripping NATO of high-level attention and military resources. They fear that Trump's rhetoric has already made NATO meaningless.
“With Trump in power, NATO is worthless,” said a German official. “We may have NATO, but we no longer have an alliance. We are biding our time, but the damage is enormous.”
Previously, “FACTS” wrote about the new economy of war and what the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have shown the US.