What Trump gets right about Nato

With the exception of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, it’s safe to assume that Europe is petrified about the prospects of a second Donald Trump presidency. As one European foreign policy analyst told the New York Times last summer: ‘It’s slightly terrifying, it’s fair to say.’

The terror meter went up a few notches this weekend, when Trump addressed supporters at a campaign rally and told a story (who knows if the story was actually true) about the time he told a European bigwig that the United States would protect a European country from Russian invasion if it failed to meet Nato’s defence spending benchmark. ‘In fact,’ Trump said, ‘I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.’

The reaction was swift, immediate, and angry. The Biden administration blasted Trump’s comments as ‘appalling and unhinged’. The German Foreign Ministry, in a not-so-subtle brushback, reminded everybody with an X account that Nato keeps 950 million people safe from a possible Russian invasion.