And once again, Trump bragged that his campaign pronouncements had prompted NATO to shift its focus to terrorism. The truth is that NATO has been fighting terrorist threats from al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan alongside the U.S. for more than 10 years, as well as providing important training and equipment to armies in the Middle East battling the Islamic State. Trump is impervious to these stubborn facts, and equally unaware of the extent to which bragging by an American president is counterproductive. All of which makes it that much harder to imagine him ever becoming a respected leader of NATO and the West, a role every American president since Harry Truman has proudly played. [...]
None of this history seems to matter to the president-elect. And while Trump always seems to go out of his way to denounce President George W. Bush’s decision to launch the Iraq war, he seems unaware that one of the most painful lessons of that war directly relates to the arrogant treatment of friends and allies. His comments recall the way top Bush officials used to talk about Europeans and the NATO alliance at the height of their hubris back in 2003. That was when Washington chose to ignore NATO’s remarkable act of solidarity after 9/11, declaring the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. as an attack on all NATO allies. It was also a time when officials like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz preferred to see the U.S. go it alone, lest NATO’s command structure slow things down. Later, of course, NATO troops were desperately sought as reinforcements as the war dragged on and on. [...]
Fourteen years later, a new American president also wants to forgive the Russians. But this time Russia’s crime is far too big to ignore. There is no principle in international relations more important than opposing large nations invading and occupying their smaller neighbors. For whatever reason, Trump doesn’t understand this critical principle, so he continues to whitewash Vladimir Putin’s government, to the astonishment of every one of America’s allies and especially to Chancellor Merkel, who has shown substantial political courage to lead the European sanctions effort despite the outcry from the German business community.
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