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Editor's note: We couldn’t be more proud of one of our teammates, Isaac Rose-Berman, who penned his first op-ed this week in USA Today: “How college students can bridge American divides: 'Study abroad' in Alabama or New York.” Please give it a read, and share far and wide!
“President Donald Trump said on Tuesday his pressure on NATO nations to pay more for their defense is leading to tens of billions of dollars more in contributions, but the allies may need to boost their budgets even more.” Reuters
“In the first address to Congress by a NATO head, Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday acknowledged serious divisions within the alliance and called for bigger defense budgets to cope with global challenges such as Russian assertiveness, the core reason NATO was created in Washington 70 years ago this week.” AP News
The left is critical of Trump’s rhetoric toward NATO and stresses its importance to defend western democracies from Russian and Chinese aggression.
“Since taking office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized NATO over how the alliance is funded and pressured other member states to increase defense spending. In the process, he has made a number of misleading claims about NATO,distorting how it works and why it exists in the first place… Moreover, Trump's remarks on NATO seem to suggest that Europe must pay the US for protection from Russia, when this is not how the alliance is meant to function.”
John Haltiwanger, Business Insider
“Russia has interfered in elections in Europe, the U.S. and Latin America. China uses influence operations and economic coercion to bend democracies to its will from Oceania to Eastern Europe. Analysts can argue about whether this is a ‘new Cold War.’ Yet it is undoubtedly a high-stakes struggle over both the balance of power and the balance of ideas. It demands that the world’s democracies band together to defend their geopolitical interests and their political institutions…
“The Trump administration deserves credit for re-energizing the Quad and pushing the NATO allies to take the Chinese threat seriously. Yet the president deserves blame not simply for questioning the defense commitments that hold U.S. alliances together, but also for denigrating democratic norms and procedures, fawning over powerful autocrats, and often treating issues of democracy promotion and human rights as mere distractions. The Trump administration calls this ‘principled realism.’ But it’s no way to catalyze the global democratic response that today’s authoritarian challenge demands.”
Hal Brands, Bloomberg
“Troublesome anniversaries are not new for NATO. The alliance has developed effective coping mechanisms to maintain its relevance and cohesion… [But] Trump’s hostility to NATO and the lack of U.S. leadership make the situation in 2019 quite different from past challenges… The big question for 2019, perhaps, is whether the presence of these… coping mechanisms, absent U.S. leadership, will be sufficient to lift NATO from its anniversary blues.”
Garret Martin and Balazs Martonffy, Washington Post
“Strains were evident during Vice President Pence’s afternoon speech at an international conference marking the 70-year anniversary…
“Previous presidents have raised the spending issue, though Trump has stood out for the harshness of his rhetoric, including a reported threat at a NATO conference in Brussels last summer to ‘go it alone’ if the allies didn’t pay up… [One Western diplomat] told The Atlantic that Trump should avoid the appearance of bullying Germany on military spending. Such aggressive messages can boomerang. The diplomat said that ‘it can actually be harder for Germany to spend more if it looks as though they are bowing to U.S. pressure.’”
Kathy Gilsinan & Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic
Many note that “Canada and the European allies came to our defense on 9/11 and invoked the Article 5 mutual-defense clause of the treaty. They viewed Osama bin Laden’s attack on the United States as an attack on them as well. NATO allies went into Afghanistan with us where they and partner nations have suffered more than 1,000 combat deaths. Most of those countries remain on the ground with our soldiers to this day. NATO allies have also fought with us in the successful campaign to defeat the Islamic State caliphate in Syria and Iraq. They conduct counterterror operations with us in Africa. The European allies have assumed full responsibility for peacekeeping in Bosnia and the bulk of the burden in Kosovo… NATO is still the world’s strongest military alliance.”
Nicholas Burns and Douglas Lute, Washington Post
“By declaring that the United States will respond with airstrikes to any attacks on American targets or assets, Mr. Trump is drawing a bright red line that Iran cannot cross. And yet, Iran relies on a network of proxy actors from Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Must they all respect Mr. Trump’s red line? There are plenty of hotheads in those proxy forces that will be incensed by the assassination, the same way young men with weapons and minimal discipline often are… Mr. Trump can’t keep an entire region from crossing his red line, making violent conflict all the more likely if the president holds to it…
“It is crucial that influential Republican senators like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Mitch McConnell remind Mr. Trump of his promise to keep America out of foreign quagmires and keep Mr. Trump from stumbling further into war with Iran.”
Editorial Board, New York Times
Others argue that “Biden was almost the only one on the stage who talked like a normal person. There was a point near the end of the debate when he was talking about getting men involved in stopping domestic violence and he said that we need to keep ‘punching’ at it… I knew that the twitterati and the analysts would tut tut. Ol’ Joe is just out of touch! He doesn’t know you can’t use words like that. Meanwhile, every non-political junkie watching the debate thought there was nothing wrong with this. Biden was just using ordinary language, not worrying too much if it was fully approved by the woke brigade.”
Kevin Drum, Mother Jones
The right generally supports NATO but stresses that Germany and other member nations must spend more on defense, and questions the usefulness of some NATO allies.
The right generally supports NATO but stresses that Germany and other member nations must spend more on defense, and questions the usefulness of some NATO allies.
“Stoltenberg skillfully articulated why NATO is a uniquely special alliance: it matches the sovereign authority of democratic governments to mutual efforts in common interest… The former Norwegian prime minister was clear that the alliance serves its 29 members by enabling each to be ‘stronger than any potential challenger.’ In an era of rising Russian aggression and continuing terrorist threats, NATO continues to be an alliance of paramount importance.”
Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner
“NATO’s efficacy defending Europe has allowed successive U.S. Administrations to shift their focus elsewhere, lately toward China and domestic concerns. Yet Russian revanchism under Vladimir Putin shows NATO’s continuing relevance… The challenge for NATO’s future is for Western Europeans to overcome their entitlement complacency to spend enough for their common defense. As for the U.S., NATO is a modest investment in deterrence to prevent a European war that America would have to return to Europe to fight. NATO at 70 is a challenged alliance but still a necessary one.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Dated But Relevant: “Germany, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe, spends just 1.24 percent of its gross domestic product on defense — in the bottom half of NATO allies. (The U.S. spends 3.5 percent of GDP on its military.)... a German parliamentary investigation found that ‘at the end of 2017, no submarines and none of the air force’s 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs,’ and ‘a Defense Ministry paper revealed German soldiers did not have enough protective vests, winter clothing or tents to adequately take part in a major NATO mission’... NATO needs some tough love, and Trump is delivering it.”
Marc Thiessen, Washington Post
“The time has [also] come for NATO and American leaders to say publicly what has long been known privately: that the actions of the current Hungarian government, both at home and in their relations with Ukraine, run counter to their longstanding commitment to NATO and do not keep faith with the commitment the United States has made to Hungary… Since 2017, the Hungarian government has blocked meetings of the NATO-Ukraine Commission, the official body for consultations between the alliance and Ukraine. Hungary did so over U.S. objections and at a time of ongoing Russian military hostilities and political subversion against Ukraine.”
Scott Cullinane, Washington Examiner
Some argue furthermore that “increasingly, [Turkey] is no friend to America or the West. In fact, Turkey would not be invited to join the alliance today. Its international objectives are too divergent and its domestic institutions are too authoritarian… Rather than desperately attempting to hold Ankara in NATO, the allies should begin considering how to ease Turkey out. There will still be issues where we need to cooperate with Ankara. However, Washington should stop making policy based on illusions of friendship with a government seeking to revive the Ottoman Empire. Turkey today is neither friend nor ally. The U.S. should treat it accordingly.”
Doug Bandow, The American Conservative
Minority view: “With the Soviet Union a wasted corpse twenty-seven years after its death, what is NATO’s purpose? Is a revanchist but nonetheless economically stagnant Russia really interested (let alone capable) of invading the Baltics? And with so many other priorities on its desk, is it time for the United States to at the very least transfer more security responsibility for Europe to the Europeans?”
Daniel DePetris, The National Interest
Others note, “I’d hate to be a Democratic member of Congress trying to convince Joe Sixpack that this is a whole new ballgame. The transcript shows Trump being Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky trying to ingratiate himself with the big dog by, for instance, mentioning that he stays at Trump hotels. Trump’s conversation is typically scattershot, wandering all over the field, leaving a reasonable listener puzzled about what the takeaways are supposed to be…
“I think Joe Sixpack’s response is going to be a hearty shrug. After all that has emerged about Trump so far, his approval rating is closely tracking Obama’s approval at the same point in his presidency. To get Mr. Sixpack’s attention you are going to have to do better than this.”
Kyle Smith, National Review
“President Trump should be happy. As much as Warren is articulate, obviously intelligent, and energetically supported by Democrats, she would also be far easier to defeat than Joe Biden… Considering Trump's economy, the president is well placed to defeat Warren.”
Tom Rogan, Washington Examiner
A libertarian's take
“While running for president in 2000, George W. Bush derided ‘nation building’ and said American foreign policy should be ‘humble’ rather than ‘arrogant.’ As president, Bush brought us the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq… While running for president in 2007, Barack Obama rejected the idea that the president has the authority to wage war without congressional authorization whenever he thinks it is in the national interest… As president, Obama did that very thing in Libya… A few years before his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump said the U.S. should withdraw immediately from Afghanistan… As president, he sent more troops to Afghanistan…
“Three men with little or no foreign policy experience entered an office where they were surrounded by experts, and they quickly shed their initial skepticism of military intervention… we should worry about a president with little knowledge of the world whose military decisions are driven by anger or domestic political considerations. But it's not clear to me that such a president poses a bigger danger than the experts who have been disastrously wrong more times than we can count.”
Jacob Sullum, Reason
Lunchables just unveiled 'Brunchables' breakfast sandwiches.
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