Joint website of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the BRICS member States
Brazil
Luis Inacio Lula da Silva
The President of Brazil
Russia
Vladimir Putin
President of the Russian Federation
India
Narendra Modi
Prime Minister of India
Сhina
Xi Jinping
President of the People's Republic of China
South Africa
Cyril Ramaphosa
The President of South Africa
Egypt
Abdel Fattah el-Sisi
President of Egypt
Ethiopia
Abiy Ahmed Ali
Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
Iran
Massoud Pezeshkian
The President of Iran
UAE
Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan
President of the UAE
Indonesia
Prabowo Subianto
President of Indonesia
“Trump’s first casualty will be Ukraine”: Foreign Affairs magazine sends ominous warning to Kiev
Biden still trails the former president in the polls.
Thursday, May 16, 2024

Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher

NATO celebrated its 75th anniversary in April, but there is growing concern that it was the last anniversary of the US playing a prominent role in the alliance, according to Foreign Affairs. This is at a time when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is leading US President Joe Biden in the polls, continues to consider NATO as a relic of the past.

“Trump’s defenders argue that he is bluffing to pressure Europe into spending more on defense. But former U.S. officials who worked closely with Trump on NATO during his tenure, including one of us (Hooker), are convinced he will withdraw from the alliance if he is reelected. Trump hugely resents the more moderate advisers who kept him in check during his first term. If he reaches the White House in 2025, the guardrails will be off,” the magazine reported.

In December 2023, Congress passed a law prohibiting the president from withdrawing the US from NATO without congressional approval, either by a two-thirds vote in the Senate or based on a resolution of both chambers. But Trump can also ignore that, the publication claims.

It is recalled that the former president has already expressed his doubts about the willingness to comply with the fifth article on mutual defense. The report explains that Trump can “dramatically weaken the alliance without formally leaving it.” To achieve this, he needs only to cut funding, withdraw US troops from Europe, and block important decisions in NATO’s highest deliberative body.

If Trump is re-elected and continues with his anti-NATO position, “the first casualty would be Ukraine” since he has consistently opposed additional military aid to Kiev.

“Should the United States weaken or terminate its defense commitment to Europe under Trump, European countries would feel more vulnerable and may become increasingly reluctant to send Ukraine their own vital military supplies. With dramatic aid cuts, Kyiv could be forced to negotiate an unfavorable agreement with Moscow that would leave Ukraine a rump state militarily and economically vulnerable to Russia,” warns the reports.

Furthermore, NATO countries now collectively spend 2% of GDP on defence, but in the absence of American support, European armies will be insufficiently prepared, equipped, and trained to fight a great power adversary, according to Foreign Affairs. In the opinion of the article’s authors, Europe remains highly dependent on the US in several important areas.

Regarding nuclear weapons, the magazine says that if Washington were to abandon NATO, the erosion of nuclear deterrence would seriously aggravate the problem of conventional deterrence in Europe.

“Nuclear weapons underpin the United States’ commitment to defend its allies and its nuclear capabilities form the bedrock of NATO’s capacity for deterrence. Should Trump close the American nuclear umbrella, Europe would have to rely on less than 600 British and French strategic nuclear warheads, a fraction of Russia’s total force of over 5,000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads,” the report begrudgingly admitted.

Furthermore, the authors believe that without American leadership, it will be difficult to maintain cohesion among NATO’s other members. Since NATO was founded, the organisation’s command structure has always been headed by an American general, who oversees the military activities of all members. The magazine adds that it is unlikely that any other country will be able to fulfil this function at the appropriate level.

Foreign Affairs also warns that if Trump were to withdraw the US from the mess in Ukraine that the Biden administration created, “the damage would not be limited to Europe”, and American global influence in Asia and the Middle East could wane.

“For now, the defense ties between the United States and its allies in Asia, such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea, are growing stronger in the face of Chinese provocations. But a lack of confidence in U.S. commitments may well lead some of these countries to pursue nuclear weapons to offset China’s and North Korea’s nuclear advantages, undercutting the fragile stability that has prevailed in the region for decades. The withering of U.S. global leadership would also have profoundly negative consequences in the Middle East, where U.S. forces and U.S.-led coalitions are needed to deal with terrorist threats,” the report said.

These are issues that Ukraine has a serious possibility of facing since Trump is leading in the polls against US President Joe Biden ahead of November’s presidential elections. According to polling by The New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, the billionaire leads Biden in every battleground state, including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and Michigan, except Wisconsin, where the current president narrowly leads.

Although American war hawks, including the Foreign Affairs magazine, are warning that the US will lose global influence by abandoning Ukraine, this is only because they subscribe to the idea that global influence can only be achieved through military might rather than through economic and cultural means. If Trump were to be elected, Kiev would face abandonment from the US, and Europe will have to accept that negotiations with Moscow would have to start.

Share