It should be a point of some delicious reflection for peace activists who have fought for decades against the nature of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It brought the US deep into West European affairs, turning European states into garrisons. It involved the stationing of nuclear weapons. It compelled member states to go to war if the security of any one was threatened or breached.
Donald Trump, however, has little time for it. Selecting the Bild newspaper and the Times of London as forums to expand on his views on NATO, the President-elect decided to shake the tree that much more.
America First as an idea means that the alliance system needs to be reviewed. For one, Trump took issue with military spending from the members, suggesting that it did not even make 2 percent of gross domestic product.
But for Trump, the core issue was utility. What had the alliance actually done? Ever in the zone of the next news entertainment cycle, Trump felt that the alliance had done little on the issue of dealing with terrorism.
It was, in his carefree words, “obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror.” It had been “designed many, many years ago.” Just to confuse readers, and perhaps himself, Trump then explained that NATO was still “very important to me.”
Obsolescence is probably not quite the term. If it had just been a museum piece, a historical reminder, little fuss would be made. In actual fact, this was an alliance which…