HALIFAX—The 32-member NATO military alliance that recently gathered in Ankara deserves to be congratulated.

The member nations did not allow United States President Donald Trump to turn the alliance into the North Atlantic Trump Organization.

Although Trump came in swinging, he exited singing the praises of NATO. His inauspicious opening remarks were dreadful. He criticized the alliance for its failure to support his war of choice with Iran.

What nonsense. For starters, Trump’s attacks display his woeful misunderstanding of what NATO actually is. From its beginnings with the Treaty of Denmark and the Truman Doctrine, to its formal creation in 1949, NATO has been a defensive military alliance. It is not a war machine. The purpose was to build a formidable barrier against a potential Soviet attack. It rested on the notion that an attack on one member was an attack on all. 

Trump tried to change that foundation to something profoundly different by suggesting that an attack by a NATO member on another country should be supported by all other members. 

The president went so far as to single out Spain as a “wasted cause” over NATO spending and the Iran war. 

In a petulant and delusional outburst, he declared the U.S. will “cut off” all trade with Spain. It has been reported that he doesn’t have the power to do that. 

In an equally outrageous display of thoughtless divisiveness, Trump repeated his thuggish declaration that the U.S. should snatch Greenland. 

Read more on this issue:

It’s ‘business as usual’ after CUSMA........

© The Hill Times