Europe must not fall into the trap of creating a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that Nato would die under a second Trump presidency and that the transatlantic bond would be over, the secretary general of the military alliance has said.
Jens Stoltenberg said leaders must engage with Donald Trump in the same way they did in 2016, no matter what the rhetoric during the US election campaign.
“I worked with him for four years,” he said. Asked if he thought Trump had changed since the end of his presidency in 2020, Stoltenberg said he could not answer but added: “I think it’s important not to create self-fulfilling prophecies in a way that assuming that a new administration in the United States will mean the end of Nato. There were concerns about that also in 2016. The reality was that Nato is stronger after four years … more troops, high readiness.”
European leaders are growing increasingly concerned about the prospect of Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, taking a controlling position in foreign policy if Trump wins in November. Vance was one of the leading opponents of the new US aid package to Ukraine, held up for months but finally approved in the spring.
The thing that Trump wanted last time he was around was for everyone to buy more weapons, because he thought it unfair that the US spends much more on NATO than the EU. He thought that since the US had a much more developed MIC, this would mean Europe paying a shitton of money to the US.
The thing he didn’t understand was that on the one hand, the EU MIC is undeveloped deliberately to let the US win at military exports in exchange of them funding our defense. On the other hand, the US MIC does not fill a lot of niches that Europe needs.
Best example of this is that when he did his big visit to Hungary, he convinced Orbán to up his military spending. What happened though was that he didn’t buy F35s, since Hungary has no infrastructure to field those, he bought Swefish fighters, German helicopters and tanks and an Airbus airliner to ̶t̶̶a̶̶k̶̶e̶̶ ̶̶h̶̶i̶̶s̶̶ ̶f̶̶a̶̶t̶̶ ̶̶a̶̶s̶̶s̶̶ ̶̶t̶̶o̶̶ ̶̶f̶̶o̶̶o̶̶t̶̶b̶̶a̶̶l̶̶l̶̶ ̶̶g̶̶a̶̶m̶̶e̶̶s̶̶ ̶̶ ̶̶act as military transport.
Military spending up, yet not a cent to the US MIC, instead Hungary supported domestic competition. And that’s Trump-friendly Orbán. Imagine the rest.
So what the Norwegian guy is saying is “all bets are off, we aren’t sitting this out anymore”.