The Republican candidate for the US presidential election, Donald Trump, was far from Washington; he campaigned in Florida, his home state and where he received Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Thursday evening. Despite this geographical distance, in the NATO summit held this week in the US capital His shadow continued to dominate allied deliberations. Concerns about a potential U-turn in US foreign policy should the former president win the November presidential election, compounded by uncertainty surrounding President Joe Biden's physical condition, underpinned a series of steps taken by NATO leaders to Help Ukraine and protect the Alliance itself from potential political problems if a former president returns who is highly critical of the organization.
During their three-day summit, the 32 countries declared Ukraine’s path to Alliance membership “irreversible” and announced the shipment of new air defense equipment and F-16 aircraft. They also agreed on measures that would transfer control and coordination of aid, which has been more or less overseen by the United States, to NATO. A command based in Germany will be responsible for managing training, planning and coordination of the aid, which will be delivered to Kiev via Slovakia, Romania and Poland.
The allies have also signed a commitment to this effect to strengthen and coordinate their defense industriesa fundamental objective to give Europe greater self-sufficiency in arms in the event that the United States, the organization's largest partner, were to reduce its contributions. Among other agreements, Germany, France, Italy and Poland have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a new long-range ground-launched cruise missile.
And they have reiterated time and again that the vast majority of members, 23, meet the minimum defense spending target of 2 percent of their GDP, and that the rest have plans to do so in the coming years. That partners meet and exceed that target is one of Trump’s greatest fixations on the Alliance.
What might happen in US policy toward NATO was one of the big topics in the Washington convention center circles and in the expert debates. During the three days of the summit, every interview with the leaders or their ministers invariably included a question about this Biden's physical and mental strengthdespite calls from lawmakers from his own party for him to step down as a candidate for re-election. In a somewhat embellished manner, the answer – with a few Hungarian exceptions – has invariably been “he is in good shape.”
Similarly, standard answers to questions about a possible Trump return ranged from “we’ll see” to “the alliance is solid, a change of government won’t change anything.”
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The policies of the two candidates became visible during the summit. “A strong NATO is fundamental to American security interests,” Biden defended at his press conference closing the summit. The Democrat presented himself as the “most qualified candidate” to defend that fortress and ensure that Ukraine gains the upper hand against the Russian invasion.
End the war “within 24 hours”
Trump, for his part, has stated on several occasions that if he returns to the presidency, he will end the war “within 24 hours”. During his meeting with Orbán, at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, both spoke about the supposed peace plan for Ukraine. “We discuss ways to achieve peace. The good news of the day: he is going to fix it!”, the Hungarian prime minister said in a message on social networks, along with a photo of both of them. The Republican, in turn, also responded on networks. “Thank you, Victor. There must be PEACE, and fast.”
This week, the former president was again highly critical of the Alliance and its members at a rally in the wealthy Doral neighborhood on the outskirts of Miami. “I didn't really have a clue what NATO was before I became president,” he insisted. “But it didn't take me long to figure it out, about two minutes. And the first thing I understood was that they weren't paying. We were paying almost the entirety of NATO. And I said that's unfair.” The Republican candidate He then repeated his threat not to respect Article 5the mutual defense clause, in case one of the countries that does not meet the defense spending target of more than 2% of GDP is attacked.
The candidate later qualified his words. In an interview with Fox News Radio, he denied that he plans – as has been suggested more than once during his term – to remove the United States from NATO. “No, what I want is for (the rest of the partners) to pay their defense bills,” he argued.
Outgoing NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenbergassures that he is not concerned about the United States’ commitment to the Alliance if Trump wins in November. As he noted, the Alliance has the support of a majority of lawmakers in the US Congress and the majority of NATO members are meeting spending targets.
Trump’s allies have also sought to dispel doubts about what would happen if the real estate magnate returned to the White House. At an event on the sidelines of the summit, Republican Senator Thom Tillis, co-chair of the NATO observer group in the U.S. House of Representatives, insisted that Trump was not considering leaving the alliance, and attributed the candidate’s rhetoric to mere electoral bluster. “It’s not a real threat,” he insisted, “let’s be clear: It’s not something that’s being considered.”
Others were more skeptical. Trump “has said he will end the war within 24 hours, and he will end it before he is even inaugurated. Nobody knows what that means. What we can be sure of is that it will not be so, because [el presidente ruso, Vladímir] “Putin has no intention of ending the war in 24 hours, no matter what happens,” former US ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker, of the Center for European Policy Analysis, said in a speech last Friday.
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