Daily Times

Poor Donald Trump. Back from his whirlwind Middle East tour — to escape rumours about how deep his closeness to a certain world leader runs — only to find talk of his loose lips still looming large, rather like a third presence, over the NATO summit. Even good old reliable Britain couldn’t be counted on not to twist the knife, with Prime Minister Theresa May telling reporters how she would be making it clear to the restless American that intelligence shared between law enforcement agencies must remain secure in the aftermath of US intelligence leaks on Manchester.

Nevertheless, Trump had a message of his own for the collective security bloc that he had famously termed “obsolete” back when he was on the campaign trail. America is no one’s sugar daddy. Money, after all talks and it is still a rich man’s world. Meaning that the Europeans had better start coughing up instead of having a ball and fooling around. This should not come as a surprise. As was evidenced in Riyadh, Trump views collective security through the prism of cash transactions. And it was no different in the Brussels “hellhole”.

Things could have been worse for the 28-member bloc. Trump didn’t come through on either of his threats: revoking the notion of collective self-defence or taking America out of the Alliance. Given that the US is the largest contributor to the NATO kitty — any move towards these ends would have risked putting the bloc “out of area and out of business”. Of course, these were never anything but bullyboy tactics. Yet there are many things worse than a world without the US-led NATO war machine.

NATO, of course, became conceptually redundant following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then along came Tony Blair who injected new life into the Alliance in terms of the Kosovo war that heralded in a new era of militarised humanitarian interventions. Quite the absolutely fabulous 50th birthday present for a one-time Cold War relic. Ditto the invasion of Afghanistan, which represented the first NATO mission outside the European theatre of war. Today, some 14 years on from that intervention and some three years on from the formal end of the bloc’s combat operations in that country — and NATO has formally announced its formal joining of the fight against the Islamic State. Which begs the question: was it simply playing at games without frontiers and wars without tears up until now?

The fact is that NATO has failed in its revised mission. As America’s longest war continues to rage — the bloc has received requests for more troops from military chiefs. And while its secretary general has ruled out a return to combat operations — we can’t be sure. Washington is said to be considering sending a 3,000-5,000-strong troop upsurge in a bid to give the Taliban no other option than to enter into a political settlement with Kabul.

That being said, Trump has secured exactly what he set out to. A NATO that is willing to represent the frontline in defence when it comes to safeguarding Euro-Atlantic security from the threat of Islamist extremism. As well as a NATO that has no other option than putting its money where its mouth is. *