In a recent speech on the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump suggested he’d encourage Russia to attack NATO allies if they fell short of ostensible financial obligations. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Trump endorser, seemed to be going with the excuse that Trump wasn’t being completely literal when pressed in a Sunday interview. But the consistency and escalation in Trump’s comments is raising alarm.
“NATO is the most successful military alliance in history. It’s essential to deterring war & defending American security. No sane American President would encourage Putin to attack our NATO allies. No honorable American leaders would excuse or endorse this,” former GOP Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming wrote Monday on X, the platform formerly called Twitter.
The idea that Trump wasn’t being literal was taking hold beyond Rubio. “I don’t believe it’s something that he honestly believes,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, according to the news publication Semafor, whose coverage of the situation was linked in Cheney’s post.
Others to condemn the rhetoric that Trump propagated include NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Biden’s team. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) operates on an agreement for mutual defense activated in the event any member is attacked, which establishes serious deterrence covering alliance members large and small across multiple continents.
Congress and the president have somewhat shored up the United States’ legal commitments to NATO, recently putting it in law that no president can on their own withdraw from the alliance. Extensive Congressional agreement with the idea would be required, and that outcome would be a tough sell. NATO has expanded amid the ongoing Russian war against Ukraine and concerns about what the larger country’s military forces could next pursue. Finland joined the organization in 2023.
Trump, meanwhile, continues facing extensive legal problems, and Cheney has also spoken out regarding these proceedings. She recently called for the criminal case against Trump related to his post-2020 election schemes to stay in power to move forward with urgency.
