He did not understand all of the excitement, said American Foreign Minister Marco Rubio when he met his European colleagues at NATO this week. America is more active than ever in the alliance, and President Donald Trump just wanted to make it stronger. That was well shredded. The first part of the sentence is right, but the current commitment of around 100,000 US soldiers in Europe is the result of decisions that Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden made. The second part of the sentence, on the other hand, is only a lip service. The fact that acts are more than saying: Trump has just stuck a comprehensive trade war against his allies. Nato general secretary Mark Rutte tried to wipe this attack on the transatlantic unit with the argument that the Alliance is not about trade, but about security. The founding fathers of Allianz knew better. In Article 2 of the extremely scarce, significant reduced North Atlantic Treaty, they undertaken to “eliminate opposites in their international economic policy and to promote economic cooperation between individual or all parties”. All US presidents kept in an exemplary manner because they had a normative understanding of the West as a free project that is promoted by free world trade. All presidents except for one: Donald Trump. Finster determined that the partners have already imposed punitive tariffs on steel and aluminum from Europe during his first term because its import “threatens or impairs national security”. That was crazy because the United States and its armaments companies had never feared that they would dry up. At the time, the President quickly steered when the Europeans imposed on tariffs. This time, however, he seems to be determined to add irretrievable damage to his partners. The recurred and expanded steel tariffs, the tariffs on cars and now on all goods from Europe serve the declared goal of rebuilding the industrial basis of its country at the expense of its allies. This text comes from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Economists have well -founded doubts about the fact that this plan works. However, it is clear that he will impose additional costs of many billion euros on the Europeans and will lead to economic decoupling between the United States and Europe in the medium term. This is diametrically towards the security interests of both sides. Perhaps a further weakening of the European economies leads you to achieve new NATO output targets in the amount of 3.5 percent or even more of your economic strength – because a lower gross domestic product drifts this number. However, this does not gain any additional ability. A upgrade, as it is necessary because of the Russian threat, can only be made from economic strength. Just because the West had this strength in the 1980s, a strength of free trade between like -minded people, he was able to force the Soviet Union to his knees with its planned economy. Alignment on war with Chinadie Europeans is now facing a double challenge. On the one hand, the United States has founded one trade war against them, and on the other hand, they will pull off their troops from Europe sooner than later. Defense Minister Pete Hegseth already agreed to his colleagues in mid -February. In the meantime, he gave the Pentagon the instruction to align all of the armed for armed for a great war with China. In it he made it clear that Europe could no longer expect US reinforcement in the event of a Russian attack. So you don’t need a lot of imagination to imagine how the ongoing review of the global US troop presence will be. What would remain of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the nuclear deterrence, especially through American atomic bombs in Europe. Nobody should lightly question this, it is the ultimate life insurance compared to an existential -threatening Russian attack for the foreseeable future. So far, the United States has held on its nuclear protective shield. But can the partners really rely on it? Even Article 5 stipulates only a general obligation to assist and is not a guarantee that states are defended in need with gun violence. Nevertheless, he welded the alliance together because the partners trusted each other. Trump undermined this trust in record time. If he now used the nuclear deterrent in the war for tariffs as a negotiating mass, the transatlantic alliance would be done.
