WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump may be learning the hard way that berating, insulting and threatening America’s traditional allies for years makes persuading them to bail you out of a jam more difficult.
NATO countries have been cool to Trump’s demand they send warships to help the U.S. Navy safeguard the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow opening to the Persian Gulf that oil tankers are currently unwilling to transit because of the threat posed by Iran, which Trump and Israel began attacking two weeks ago.
During a question-and-answer session with reporters Monday at the White House, Trump continued complaining that other nations — none of whom was consulted prior to the start of the air attacks — were not “enthusiastically” responding to Trump’s request.
“They should be in here very happily helping us,” he said. “They should be jumping to help us because we’ve helped them for years.”
Trump has spent many years, from even before his first term, calling other NATO members freeloaders and mischaracterizing the alliance as a form of protection scheme in which other nations were supposed to pay “dues” to the United States.
“Trump doesn’t understand how alliances work. He wants what he wants when he wants it. It’s just that simple,” said John Bolton, one of Trump’s national security advisers in his first term who disclosed that Trump had planned to withdraw from NATO had he won reelection in 2020.
After he returned to office last year, Trump disparaged NATO member Canada and said it should be the 51st state while also threatening a military seizure of Greenland from Denmark, another NATO ally. The Greenland threats, even as they were largely mocked as unserious in the United States, provoked a monthslong crisis in Europe.
Now, after attacking Iran without first seeking any input from those and other allies, he is expressing dismay that they are not eagerly sending ships and service members to ease the global energy calamity he himself created, which has caused domestic gasoline prices to jump more than 70 cents a gallon.
Trump on Monday again repeated his false claim that NATO would not stand by the United States: “I always said when in need they won’t protect us.”
In fact, the alliance’s mutual defense clause, spelled out in Article 5 of the charter and which states that an attack on one nation is treated as an attack on all, has only been invoked once: following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S.
Trump, however, speaks as if Article 5 language requires its members to join with the United States in an offensive war of choice, which it does not.