President Donald Trump's positions on NATO are unpredictable. Moreover, the plural used in "the positions" is not a figure of speech, the American president having clearly stated, depending on the context, very different, and even divergent, positions concerning the Atlantic alliance, ranging from threats of unilateral exits to fiery declarations on the unwavering bond that unites the United States and European countries within this alliance.
Anyway, the American senators preferred to take the lead against their versatile president, by setting up dsafeguards to prevent any reckless action. And what could be more effective than hitting the wallet? To achieve their goals, the senators voted for a law preventing the financing of any withdrawal of American troops from Europe for a year, so as to break the link of simultaneity that could exist between an announcement of withdrawal from NATO, and the initial troop withdrawals, effectively limiting the political benefit of such an initiative.
Is this an internal political maneuver aimed at further highlighting presidential inconsistency? This is a hypothesis, but we must keep in mind that the Senate remained in the hands of the Republicans following the mid-term elections in 2018. It was therefore necessary, for this law to be passed, that Republican senators support it.
The other hypothesis is that there is real fear within the American political class regarding the president's intentions regarding NATO. A hypothesis that is all the more problematic given that the majority of European states construct their defense policy solely within NATO, with massive intervention from the United States. This paradigm is at the heart of the European plebiscite for the F35 as for the Patriot PAC3, largely preferred to their European counterparts, with the aim of optimizing inter-operability with US forces.
Between the hypothesis, certainly unlikely, of the United States leaving NATO, and a hypothesis, on the other hand more than probable, of the rapid erosion of American forces in the European theater linked to Chinese military strengthening, the assumptions on which many European countries build their defense prove to be very risky….