The Real Meaning Behind Trump’s NATO Remarks, According to Conrad Black

Commentary

The Canadian reaction to the re-emergence of the possibility of an American Trump presidency has generated a disappointing variety of responses in Canada.

If Canada had been governed seriously in the past eight years our economic growth would be at least equal to that of the United States, we would not still be a contemptible freeloader in NATO with a defence policy that has essentially consisted of making sure we have access to the Pentagon in case we are attacked by anybody, and we would greet political events in the United States and other countries with the equanimity of a rich, internationally responsible nation confident of our alliances and of our strengths. For all of its history as a coherent political entity, the national identity of Canada has been that we are not Americans.

Very few Canadians can define the serious differences with that country, although they exist, and in general raising the point brings a pallid and unconvincing claim that we are a kinder and gentler place and that we have a large number of French-speaking Canadians and a closer historic relationship with the United Kingdom than the Americans do. There is some truth to all of that too, but it falls far short of a serious explanation of our national raison d’etre. It is demeaning that a year before the next Inauguration Day in the United States, campaign remarks of the former president seeking re-election are so warped and misinterpreted that we are told by some apparently plausible journalists to prepare for the abrupt end of the Western Alliance.

What former President Trump told a wildly applauding group of corn-fed South Carolina wool-hats last week was that he was not as president going to use their money to defend Europeans against Russian leader Vladimir Putin if they were not prepared to defend themselves. There is nothing unreasonable in this, and nor is there any reason to be alarmed about Russia as long as the alliance continues to be firm in its resistance to Russian aggression. Russia has a smaller GDP than Canada as well as four West European NATO members—Germany, the UK, France, and Italy—and we have seen the difficulty with which it has made significant inroads against Ukraine, a former constituent member of the Soviet Union with barely a quarter of Russia’s population.

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NATO was founded in 1949 to give Europeans a comfort level that America would defend Western Europe against attack by Stalin’s USSR, which at that point had a nuclear pre-eminence amongst European powers. All of the initial European member states had been severely damaged and taken substantial casualties in World War II. It has proved the most successful defensive alliance in history, and after 42 years the Soviet Union peacefully disintegrated and a number of former constituent units of the Soviet Union and all of its former satellite states have joined NATO.

It then became, in practice and not by agreement, “an alliance of the willing,” which meant that all members would be happy to enjoy what amounted to an American military guarantee under Article 5, which holds that an attack upon one member is an attack upon all, but as for anything not directly involving them, the members would decide if they wanted to do anything about it or not. At this point, the Western Alliance was in danger of becoming a farce.

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