Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser to the Conservative Party.
At a campaign rally in Louisiana, Donald Trump made his intentions clear: he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” – that is, attack NATO members.
Sure, he added a caveat, in his usual Trumpist way, saying it only applied to NATO members “who didn’t pay their dues.” But Trump caveats are not to be taken seriously. He adds them to give his sycophants a get-out, just like he told people on January 6th to be “peaceful”. They’re not supposed to be believed.
Spending two per cent of GDP on defence, something all frontline NATO members will manage by January 2024, won’t change Trump’s behaviour. Like the wolf in the famous New Yorker cartoon, he doesn’t hide his plans.
Though he can’t, by law, leave NATO, nobody can stop him from ordering US officials to block NATO’s decision-making processes, force him issue orders to respond to Russian attacks, or prevent him withdrawing from NATO’s integrated command structure, as Charles de Gaulle did in 1967. He’s no safer in the White House than Jeremy Corbyn would be in Number 10.
We’re not in 2016 any more; there is no need to judge Trump by his words, when his actions provide all the evidence we need.
Before he took office, his campaign staff colluded with Russian hackers. In office, he tried to extort a fake investigation of Joe Biden’s son from Volodomyr Zelensky.
Now, he’s doing everything he can to prevent Congress supplying €60bn of military aid to Ukraine. Trump’s pressure got Mike Johnson elected as House Speaker, and Johnson is preventing the aid bill, which passed the Senate by 70 votes to 30, from being voted on, because he knows it would pass.
Though a procedural trick known as a “discharge petition” might allow enough Republican rebels join Democrats and approve the aid, the process could take at least another month.
That means aid would only be approved in March: three critical months after it was supposed to have arrived – three months in which Russia, reinforced with millions of shells from North Korea, has been able to further bleed Ukrainian forces, forcing them into a slow retreat and to confront painful questions about mobilisation.
While a re-elected Trump would starve Ukraine and NATO allies of weapons, Russia is gearing up for wider war. Estonian intelligence has uncovered that it is reverting to a Soviet-style mass army, able to field large numbers of troops and artillery against the thinly-populated Baltic states and Finland.
Despite European NATO’s technological superiority over Russia, we will struggle to defend against a Russian attack. Only Finland and Poland have land equipment on the necessary scale, and Poland’s recent rearmament (including ordering 2000 tanks from South Korea) will take some years to bear fruit.
Furthermore, our nuclear deterrence is insufficient: the UK and France, together, have around 550 warheads, compared to 1,500 that Russia has deployed (out of stockpile of more than 6000).
Worse, NATO’s plans to defend against Russian aggression are conceived with integral US involvement. Air defence, air heavy lift, and surveillance capabilities are all dominated by American equipment. Planners expect US forces to be available; logisticians expect US spare parts for American equipment used by European militaries to be in plentiful supply.
None of this can be guaranteed if Trump wins.
On K Street, Washington DC’s lobbyist nexus, the American defence industry needs to spring into action. Were Trump to obstruct deliveries it would “seriously undermine countries’ faith in the US as a defence supplier”, warns Tim Lawrenson, a consultant specialising in the European defence industry. The vote in the House of Representatives on Ukraine aid will be a first test of their lobbying strength.
But it is back on this side of the Atlantic that emergency measures are most needed.
First, European NATO needs to develop contingency plans to defend against Russia with little or American involvement (perhaps with US acquiescence under the guise of preparing to defend Europe at the same time as a major war breaks out in Asia).
Second, joint production of ammunition and equipment needs to be accelerated; OCCAR (a European military procurement organisation comprising the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) can provide the necessary legal structure to finance this efficiently in the absence of a UK-EU defence agreement.
Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Baltic States should be admitted to OCCAR as full members. Existing ammunition factories should move to round-the-clock shifts as those in Finland are already doing.
Third, European NATO members need to press upon the US congress the importance of the European export market. In 2022 one third of American defence exports, worth €5bn according to the authoritative SIPRI database, went to European states. These translate into orders in American factories, and sustain American jobs in swing districts.
Finally, a debate needs to be had about nuclear rearmament, and the extension of the Anglo-French nuclear umbrella to frontline states.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty makes it difficult for any non nuclear-weapons state to arm itself, and weakening it would also weaken the efforts to counter Iran’s nuclear programme. But British or French weapons programmes could be expanded, and based on the territory of other member states or flown in their aircraft (as Germany currently does with US nuclear bombs under its “nuclear sharing” doctrine).
Trump’s reelection is far from a foregone conclusion. But unlike in 2016, nobody will be able to claim to have been caught by surprise. We need to get ready to defend ourselves without American help – before it’s too late.