Trump Says U.S. Should Only Defend NATO Members Who Have Paid Their Bills

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Trump's remarks on NATO set off freakout

The Republican nominee suggests the U.S. should only defend NATO allies if they've paid their bills.

Nahal Toosi

"Solidarity among allies is a key value for NATO," the military alliance's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in a statement as word spread of Trump's remarks. "We defend one another... Two world wars have shown that peace in Europe is also important for the security of the United States."

Trump’s comments about NATO, delivered in a lengthy interview with The New York Times, were just his latest bombshell on the foreign policy front. The Republican presidential nominee has offered a radically different view of U.S. engagement with the world than many in his own party hold — one that is defined primarily in economic terms and which does not hold treaties sacrosanct.

In the Times interview, which came ahead of his speech Thursday night at the Republican National Convention, Trump also said he would not chide authoritarian leaders for cracking down on civil liberties or their political rivals; that he'd pull the U.S. out of the North American Free Trade Agreement if Canada and Mexico didn't agree to better terms; and that he may withdraw U.S. troops deployed around the world, even from sensitive areas such as the Korean peninsula.

But the real estate mogul's comments on NATO were unusually striking.

Trump, who has long questioned whether other NATO states are carrying their share of the financial and military burdens that come with the alliance, said that if he became president the U.S. would only come to the assistance of a member state under attack if it “has fulfilled their obligations to us.”

That approach flies in the face of one of NATO's bedrock principles, Article 5, which lays out that an attack on one member amounts to an attack on all members, and that fellow NATO states must help the one that was struck.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, established in 1949, has 28 members. The first time NATO invoked Article 5 was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, and America's NATO allies have since helped fight the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. 

Many NATO members also are involved in the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State terrorist network, and a number of their representatives were in Washington on Thursday for a meeting of the coalition, making the timing of Trump's comments all the more sensitive.

By Thursday morning, Trump aides were trying to contain the fallout from his remarks. His campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, insisted that Trump simply wants NATO to adjust to new security realities, where threats are often from non-state actors.

"What Mr. Trump has said consistently is that he thinks NATO needs to be modernized and brought into the world of the 21st century where terrorism and [the Islamic State] which didn't exist when NATO was created are taken into account in the way they deal with things," he said.

Such explanations are unlikely to satisfy NATO members, especially smaller countries, such as the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who in recent years have begun to fear Russia's military aims. (Trump was specifically asked about the threat to the Baltic states in the Times interview.)

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the president of Estonia, tweeted his dismay early Thursday, saying, "Estonia is 1 of 5 NATO allies in Europe to meet its 2% def expenditures commitment. Fought, with no caveats, in NATO's sole Art 5 op. in Afg." He added: "We are equally committed to a l l our NATO allies, regardless of who they may be. That's what makes them allies."

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, meanwhile, tweeted: "Latvia stands shoulder to shoulder with all our allies, always did, always will, committed to strong Alliance & defense of our values."

Even if Trump were to never actually follow through on his pay-for-protection philosophy, the simple fact that he would hint at it publicly, critics argued, could rattle allies and fray diplomatic relations. Those critics included some fellow Republicans, underscoring how divisive his candidacy has been for the GOP, even as the party has sought project unity during its national convention this week.

“Statements like these make the world more dangerous and the United States less safe," Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and frequent Trump critic, said in a statement. "If Mr. Trump is serious about wanting to be commander-in-chief he needs to better understand the job which is to provide leadership for the United States and the free world."

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who lost out on the Republican presidential nomination to Trump, said he hoped that if Trump wins the White House, "we can convince him to change his mind on that."

"And if he doesn’t," Rubio said, "we’ll obviously have to oppose that, because if Article 5 is in doubt, then the whole NATO alliance could collapse.”

Trump is hardly alone in his concern that some NATO members do not devote enough resources to the alliance and that the U.S. carries more than its share of the burden. Even President Barack Obama has gently reproached some NATO states for not living up to their commitment of devoting 2 percent of their GDP to defense, saying in a speech in April that "sometimes Europe has been complacent" about its security.

But Article 5 is not meant to apply only to members who have paid all their dues. That's why Trump's NATO comments were a gift to Democrats seeking to portray him as a threat to the world order.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's campaign put out a statement invoking Republican darling Ronald Reagan to blast Trump.

"Ronald Reagan would be ashamed. Harry Truman would be ashamed. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who help build NATO into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our commander in chief," Clinton senior policy adviser Jake Sullivan said in the statement.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a potential vice presidential pick for Clinton, said he was "stunned" to learn of Trump's comments. "Is the new rule that your word isn't your bond?" he asked at an immigration-related event in his home state.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest, meanwhile, tried to reassure America's partners. "There should be no mistake or miscalculation made about this country’s commitment to our trans-Atlantic alliance," he said.

A number of Trump's critics, including Graham, pointed out that Trump's statements appear to be exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin would want to hear. Putin has long felt somewhat threatened by NATO's presence, especially as former Soviet states have sought to join the alliance.

Trump has been complimentary toward Putin; he told the Times that he and Putin "will get along very well." The Republican's team was reported to have pressured the party's platform-writing committee to remove references about the U.S. coming to the aid of Ukraine, a former Soviet country that Russia invaded in 2014 and has been locked in a battle over territory with since.

"I’m 100 percent certain how Russian President Putin feels — he’s a very happy man," Graham said of the Trump comments' fallout.

Trump's vice presidential pick, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, also sought to defend him Thursday as word spread of his NATO remarks.

“I have every confidence that Donald Trump will see to it that the United States of America stands by our allies and lives up to our treaty obligations," Pence told "Fox and Friends." "That being said, I think he makes an enormously important point that I think resonates with millions of Americans that at a time where we have $19 trillion in national debt, that we need to begin to look to our allies around the world to step up and pay their fair share.”

But the Clinton team was all too happy to point out the daylight between Trump and Pence, as the former secretary of state gears up to announce her own choice of running mate. Sullivan's statement noted that Pence also had spoken of the importance of America's allies in his speech at the convention on Wednesday.

“Tonight, Mike Pence said Donald Trump would stand with our allies. Tonight, Donald Trump flatly contradicted him," Sullivan said.

Giulia Paravicini, Michael Schwab, Louis Nelson, Burgess Everett, Daniel Ducassi and Bianca Padro Ocasio contributed to this report.