John Bolton, once former President Donald Trump’s national security advisor and now a harsh critic of his former boss, pulled no punches in an opinion column in The Hill and a subsequent TV interview.
Trump, he explained, “doesn’t really have a philosophy, as we understand it in political terms.” But he sees international affairs as a zero-sum game. Bolton warned that, if Trump were elected again, he might simply pull the U.S. out of NATO. The former president instinctively resents that most member states are still failing to spend enough on defense and was complaining of the U.S. being taken for a ride financially as far back as 2017.
Bolton tells a terrifying story. But the possibility of Trump withdrawing needs to be seen against the background of an internal NATO political situation already under severe stress.
A month ago, NATO leaders were smiling and shaking hands for the media in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius at their annual summit. Some tensions had arisen, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had expressed frustration at the pace of delivery of equipment to his armed forces and the still-only-in-principle support for Ukraine’s accession to NATO. But the final communiqué was positive, Finland was formally admitted as the alliance’s 31st member and coveted photographs of delegates shaking hands with Zelensky were obtained.
But there are deeper cracks under the surface. Tacitly emblematic of this was the (fourth) extension of the tenure of NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The Norwegian politician first started boxing up his office in 2021, having applied to be, then nominated as, governor of the Norwegian central bank. But when Russia invaded Ukraine months later, the North Atlantic Council asked Stoltenberg to stay on in his post. His successor should have been agreed upon in Vilnius, but, with no consensus achievable, Stoltenberg was asked to hold on for just one more year.
This has caused profound tension. The outstanding candidate to succeed Stoltenberg was the U.K. defense secretary, Ben Wallace. He has been in charge of Britain’s military for four years, has stayed at the forefront of the coalition supporting Ukraine and was a professional soldier in his 20s. He even took the step of saying, mildly, that he would like the top job. At 53, he was perfectly poised to lead the alliance for a full term and still leave before reaching retirement age. Alas, it was not to be.
Initial scuttlebutt was that some EU member states, notably France, did not want a candidate from Brexit Britain. In June, it became increasingly clear that President Biden did not want Wallace, either. Not that he had another candidate in mind, but that he did not want Wallace to lead NATO.
In NATO’s world of murmurs and allusions, Biden’s motivation is not clear. Some suggested that it was because Wallace had served two tours of duty with the Scots Guards in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, an unforgivable stain on his record for the notoriously partisan semi-Irish president. It was then mooted that first lady Jill Biden was pressing her husband to ensure a woman be appointed, at which time the name of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, was suddenly on everyone’s lips. Her stint as Germany’s minister of defense from 2013 to 2019 is regarded by many as a low point for her and the Bundeswehr.
Britain, as the inevitably junior partner in the “special relationship,” cannot afford to say it loudly, but there is now a seam of quietly fierce anger toward Washington. Biden’s casual anti-British quips, his remark that he visited Northern Ireland in April “to make sure the Brits didn’t screw around” with the Belfast Agreement, and then the rejection of Wallace have caused palpable offense in diplomatic circles.
They remind people that Biden has more than once managed to mangle Rishi Sunak’s name, hardly a tongue twister. In longstanding relationships, little things can cause unexpected friction.
Other disagreements swirl beneath the surface. In 2006, NATO set a goal for its members of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense. Eight nations met that target in 2022, and this is expected to rise to 11 in 2023. But that leaves two-thirds of the alliance falling short. Trump’s desire for a U.S. withdrawal would be financially catastrophic.
There is also a looming crisis of identity. Does NATO exist as a defensive organization to protect an essentially European core of countries? Or should it move toward what is already dubbed “Global NATO,” a platform for its members to manage and contain China, North Korea and other possible threats to the world order?
John Bolton is a radical straight-talker not prone to crying wolf. Trump has been critical of NATO and its uneven burden-sharing for years, so he is not breaking new ground there. The notion of him deciding that the North Atlantic Treaty, which is due to celebrate its 75th anniversary next April, has outlived its usefulness is absolutely within the imagination. Such a step would be the effective end of NATO.
If the Biden administration wants to make this outcome as unlikely and illogical as possible, it has to address the alliance’s already fissiparous nature over the remaining time before the presidential election. If NATO is to be shaken up and future-proofed, time is running out.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs. He was senior official in the UK House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the UK delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.