What Trump risks in Europe
By WESLEY CLARK
'With President Trump soon to land in Europe for the NATO summit meeting, many of our closest allies are concerned. They have seen Trump disrupt the recent G-7 meeting, been hectored by him publicly on their own levels of defense spending, and watched as the U.S. President, apparently the chosen favorite of Russian President Vladimir Putin in his 2016 election meddling, acts chummy with Putin and other dictators.
Some in Europe are asking, can NATO survive? Some in the United States are asking, should it? I want to add my voice to the chorus arguing that it must.
When the Cold War ended, many in Europe questioned whether NATO should be terminated. They reasoned that if the Soviet Union no longer existed, and if its alliance of satellite countries no longer existed, then NATO had outlived its purpose.
But NATO proved its value by ending Serbia’s aggression and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and supporting the U.S. efforts post-9/11 in Afghanistan, and by its ability to strengthen Europe’s teamwork with the United States on issues of terrorism and cybersecurity.
More fundamentally, NATO has provided an assurance of security which has enabled the fledgling democracies of Eastern Europe to survive and their economies to grow. As the then-foreign minister of Bulgaria, Nadezhda Mihaylova, explained some 20 years ago, “Today Russia is weak, but soon Russia will be strong again, and before then Bulgaria must be in NATO.”
We listened. In 2002, President George W. Bush wisely led NATO to invite Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia to join Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as new members of the North Atlantic alliance. In the years since, Albania and Montenegro have also joined.
Today Russia, under Putin, is surging back to regain control over its old empire, to weaken the European Union, to have NATO relax its security umbrella for Eastern Europe, to displace American leadership in the Mideast, to build a long-term and powerful presence through Iran and into the Persian Gulf, and to drive the United States back across the Atlantic.
Russian military hardware and Russian intervention in Ukraine and Syria show that Russia is indeed “back,” and an active threat to our friends and allies.
This is a terrible time for an American President, putatively the head of NATO, to weaken the alliance.'>>>
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-trump-in-europe-vs-nato-20180710-story.html#
= new reply since forum marked as read
