Spectre of Nato sceptic Trump stalks European security conference

President Donald Trump arrives to speak on the second day of the Nato summit in Brussels, Belgium, on 12 July 2018. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

The annual meeting of western leaders and security officials in Munich is being held this year under a dark cloud of foreboding surrounding Donald Trump’s potential return to the US presidency.

European governments have been particularly shaken by Trump’s apparent strength, and Joe Biden’s weakness, in swing states, in combination with what the former president has said in recent days about the Nato alliance.

Trump reportedly contemplated withdrawal from Nato in his first term, and in recent statements he has made clear that, at the very least, he would not order American troops to go to the defence of any alliance member against Russia that had not spent the Nato target of 2% of GDP on defence.

“No, I would not protect you,” Trump recalled telling an unnamed head of state of an important Nato member. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay your bills.”

Keith Kellogg, a retired lieutenant general who was chief of staff of Trump’s national security council (NSC), echoed the theme. Kellogg, who is still one of Trump’s foreign affairs advisers, suggested to Reuters this week that any Nato member which fell short of the 2% threshold would have the mutual defence guarantees, laid out in article five of the alliance’s founding charter, stripped from them.

“It creates a different tier, like frequent flyer points. It’s not so much a coalition of the willing, as a coalition of the billing. It turns on its head the whole idea of mutual defence,” said Fiona Hill, who served as senior director for Russia in Trump’s NSC but who has since been an outspoken critic of his approach on Russia.

Speaking from the Munich Security Conference, Hill said that the growing prospect of a Nato sceptic in the Oval Office had concentrated minds among European officials.

“Before they were just asking the same question over and over again: “What’s the likelihood of Trump coming back? And they kept hoping they would get a different answer,” she said. “I think they have now got the message … He gave them a wake-up call.”

In December, Congress passed a bipartisan bill, very much with the prospect of a Trump restoration in mind, prohibiting a US president from unilaterally withdrawing from the alliance. But by suggesting that as commander-in-chief he would not honour US article five obligations, Trump could significantly damage Nato’s credibility.

“He can’t legally dump it but what he can do is totally undermine it, and that’s what he’s already doing,” Hill said.

Michael McCaul, the Republican chair of the House foreign affairs committee, suggested to reporters on Friday that Trump was acting as a transactional businessman, making threats to get Nato partners to meet their defence spending pledges. In office, McCaul said, Trump could be persuaded out of his most destructive instincts when it came to the alliance.

“We will go back to our playbook from the prior administration,” McCaul said at a meeting organised by the Christian Science Monitor. “It’s important to have his ear to make sure he doesn’t get off the reservation.”

In his first term, Trump put foreign policy traditionalists in his cabinet who resisted his most pro-Putin inclinations, but US political observers predict that if he wins a second term in November, loyalty will far outweigh competence or experience in the selection of a national security team.

Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to Nato, said there was a range of scenarios for the alliance under a second Trump presidency. One would be a sort of passive indifference.

“He could not have an ambassador and provide no instructions to the mission, which would largely remain silent, in which case business continues,” Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said.

Alternatively, Trump could seek to actively undermine Nato.

“As an organisation that operates by consensus, he could refuse to allow Nato to make any decisions – either by saying no or by not showing up,” Daalder said. “He could undermine Nato in other ways – refusing to participate in operations, training, command structure, etc. All this could bring the alliance to an effective halt.”

He said nothing much could be done to “Trump-proof” the alliance in the next few months, but argued that Europeans should move as fast as possible towards establishing a more self-reliant European pillar within Nato, something previous US administrations had opposed.

Adam Thomson, a former British diplomat and now director of the European Leadership Network thinktank and advocacy group, said Trump was simply bringing to a head a long-festering rift over defence spending imbalances.

“Trump is just the crude expression of a much deeper and longer-standing transatlantic issue,” Thomson said. “How can it be right or healthy that Europe, collectively the richest economy on the planet, nearly 80 years after the end of the second world war still depends so heavily for its security on a country over 3,000 miles away?

“The need for Europeans to think how to manage despite an unreliable USA will give a stronger voice to the hard defence powers in Europe: the UK, France, Poland and to a lesser extent Italy, Norway and Denmark,” he added. “There will inevitably also be a greater focus on the British and French nuclear deterrents.”

The increasing likelihood of a Trump presidency has come at a time when European Nato partners were already boosting their defence spending. This year, 18 of the 31 Nato allies are expected to meet the 2% benchmark. But in the face of an expansionist Russia, which has thrown 40% of its government budget (7.5% of GDP) into rearmament, there are many voices warning that the old Nato goals fall short of what is really needed.

Trump’s rhetoric “has focused minds on being serious about defence”, said Oana Lungescu, a former Nato spokesperson. “But of course it’s not enough and it’s not fast enough.

“I think the Europeans obviously have expressed concern about the possibility of a new Trump presidency,” said Lungescu, now a distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). “But I think the message is don’t just be concerned, be prepared.”