The Shakedown Threat

Over the weekend, donald trump essentially threatened the survival of NATO - basically all of Europe - in the face of Vladimir Putin's aggressive push to rebuild a Russian empire. If we take a look at what foreign policy pundit Fred Kaplan notes over at Slate (paywalled):

Did Trump just encourage Russia to invade U.S. allies in Europe if they don’t spend more on defense? It seems so. At a campaign rally on Saturday, he recounted a story about a NATO summit he attended while he was president:

One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, “Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?” I said, “You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?” He said, “Yes, let’s say that happened.” “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [presumably the Russians] to do whatever the hell they want.”

In one aspect, this remark—widely reported in news media the past few days—has been taken a bit out of context. Trump cited the story as an example of how his tough-guy tactics were effective. He got the allies, he claimed, to “pay up”—to boost their defense spending after years of shirking their obligations...

Yet, more broadly, the remark is just as alarming and dangerous as Trump’s critics and many European officials are interpreting it. It reflects a long-standing attitude of indifference and borderline hostility to allies, of viewing them the same way that a Mafia boss regards his capos or clients in a protection racket.

There is no question: When—not if—Vladimir Putin read that remark, he mused that he might get away with intimidating or invading Poland, the Baltic nations, or some other nearby countries if Trump wins the 2024 election. Ditto for Xi Jinping and Taiwan...

Much like Kaplan, I'm viewing trump's public ire towards NATO not as trump as a landlord upset about rent not getting paid but as a mob boss demanding his payoff for protection by his victims. Try to remember, one of the things trump kept insisting to our NATO allies wasn't to increase their defense spending but to pay the United States - to pay him, hint hint - over what trump saw as "unpaid bills".

Which, of course, is not how diplomacy and military alliances work. But donald trump doesn't care about what works, he only cares about what profits donald trump. And he's perfectly willing to break everything to profit from it. Back to Kaplan:

Trump’s purely transactional view of alliances is nothing new. It was widely reported that, as president, he told his aides several times that he wanted to pull out of NATO. In 2020 he told the European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, “You need to understand that if Europe is under attack, we will never come to help you,” adding, “By the way, NATO is dead and we will leave.” After he left office, some of his top aides said that if he had been reelected in 2020, Trump would have definitely quit the alliance...

This was a legitimate fear for me back in 2018: Even before matters escalated over Ukraine in 2022, trump's disdain for NATO - and open willingness to pander to Putin - threatened to break the alliance in ways that would have harmed America's global standing as well as expose Eastern Europe to immediate threat from Russia:

Under other circumstances, it would be hilarious to watch all the hardened foreign policy wizards of the Republican Party - all of them perfectly aware of how the U.S. has benefited in both military and political matters being united with the other Western democracies during the Cold War and Global War on Terror decades - suddenly switch their worldviews from "Europe good, Putin bad" to "OMG Putin is just the best BFF ever!" Under other circumstances, most of those intelligent, well-studied thinkers of realpolitik would argue against any ill-advised ignorant demolition of a stable, valuable alliance. But we no longer live in that world: This is the World of Fox Not-News, and if you can't help shill the Narrative of the hour/month/year which happens to be whatever is in trump's head that very moment, you are persona non grata to the GOP...

We will see a near-immediate end to foreign sharing of intel: What is the likelihood the UK or France is willing to share data with a nation that could easily hand it over to Russia without batting an eye? NATO's efforts to stop Russia from a full-out invasion of Ukraine falls apart. Half of Central Europe - bizarrely under the political sway of right-wing Nationalist governments more friendly to Putin than they should - could well cut out of any NATO or shared alliance with Western Europe and turn most of Eastern Europe back into a Russian playground...

Which - again - is exactly what Putin wants.

We're getting into the second full year of Russia's full-out war on Ukraine, which followed eight years of border clashes after 2014 when Ukraine threw out their corrupt pro-Russian government. For all of Russia's military might on paper, it's been an utter disaster for Putin. While Ukraine hasn't succeeded in a major counteroffensive since autumn of 2022, Russia shows no sign of claiming more territory. All Russia has done well during this campaign has been targeting civilian centers to terrorize the populace and adding to their long list of war crimes. The only advantage Putin has - the manpower to conscript millions more of his people than Ukraine can - is the one resource keeping Russia in this quagmire.

Putin's hope is clear: If trump wins the November election, any potential American support to Ukraine - which has been tied up by trump's Republican allies in Congress - officially ends. Up until then, Putin can throw more Russians into the meat grinder and never care for the bloodshed he's spilling of both Russian and Ukrainian alike.

trump isn't even hiding how he's eager to play his part. He's made it clear he views Putin as a personal ally and would happily convert American foreign/military interests to align with Putin's. If that means using Russia as a threat to bully Europe into submitting to trump's demands, trump would love it. But trump would also cheer on letting not only Ukraine fall to Putin but also the Baltics and arguably Poland as well. There's a reason why Russians are starting to issue warnings to Germany, and it's because they're confident trump will help them squeeze Europe by next year.

The underlying message trump is getting out there is that he doesn't care one whit about the United States' obligations to long-standing treaties that have kept the peace with our most powerful allies for more than 60 years. And it's not even trump using Russia as a boogeyman to scare NATO into being more compliant. This is trump signaling to his mob boss Putin that Europe will be easy pickings should trump regain the White House in 2024.

If you genuinely want world peace, you have to realize that Putin is the greatest threat to world peace in our lifetime. You have to realize trump is just one of Putin's pawns to keep war and chaos going so Putin can reclaim his dreams of empire.

You have to, for the love of ALL that's holy, vote against trump and make sure he never gets anywhere near the Oval Office again.