00:00Jamie Shea, former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Emerging Security Challenges and Senior Fellow at the Friends of Europe
00:07Think Tank.
00:08Jamie, welcome back. Good to see you.
00:10Has the Iran conflict simply exposed a fundamental mismatch, a fundamental misunderstanding in what the United States expects NATO to
00:20be and to do?
00:23Jamie, thanks for having me back on.
00:25Certainly a fundamental misunderstanding, absolutely, because NATO is a defensive alliance and it protects its members when they experience an
00:35unprovoked aggression from outside,
00:38which, of course, is what happened, your viewers will remember, after the 9-11 terrorist attacks back in 2001 when
00:46NATO launched a mission which lasted for 20 years alongside the United States in Afghanistan.
00:52But, of course, NATO is not the 7th Cavalry, if I can use that expression of the United States, which
00:58can be sort of instrumentalized every time the United States conducts a military operation around the world,
01:04particularly one where it does not consult NATO in advance, it does not lay down any specific objectives or a
01:11plan,
01:12it does not in advance ask the NATO member states to provide any kind of capabilities and it doesn't have
01:19a mandate in international law.
01:22So NATO seems to be, if you like, the whipping boy on this occasion of President Trump's sort of dissatisfaction
01:29with contributions from the Europeans.
01:31But if those contributions from the Europeans were so important to the Americans before they launched the operation,
01:38then why did they not make a much more concerted and organized attempt to consult NATO allies and get that
01:44sort of put in place in advance?
01:47All I can add, Jamie, is that since President Trump has come back to office, NATO has done all of
01:53the things that Trump has asked NATO to do.
01:55Spend more money on defense, give more support to Ukraine, take over various former command positions vacated by the United
02:04States.
02:05And so NATO is really on the receiving end of a kind of criticism which I feel is completely unjustified
02:12and unwarranted on this occasion.
02:13So how serious is Washington, do you think, this time about re-examining its relationship with NATO and NATO itself?
02:23Well, you have to take what President Trump says seriously, even if he does change his mind and sometimes contradicts
02:31himself.
02:31For example, just back in July, President Trump came to the last NATO summit in The Hague and expressing great
02:38satisfaction with NATO
02:40and even reasserted America's commitment to defend its European allies and claim credit, of course,
02:46for getting the Europeans to spend 5% of their GDP on defense.
02:51So in less than a year, we've now gone, if you like, from one extreme to the other.
02:54So, yes, you have to take President Trump seriously.
02:57But let's hope that cool heads prevail, because clearly it's not in the U.S. interest to withdraw from NATO.
03:05The U.S. needs its bases in Europe to protect its power.
03:08It needs allies to support it around the world, which they normally do when they're consulted in advance and treated
03:16as real partners.
03:19And the U.S. has already given NATO a clear plan from now to the end of the decade to
03:27rebalance the alliance more 50-50
03:29in terms of what Europeans contribute and what Americans contribute.
03:34And I would hope, Jamie, that over the next couple of days we can start to de-escalate all of
03:38this.
03:38There are things that the Europeans can do to get themselves back in President Trump's good books,
03:45more use of those bases in Europe, more help to Ukraine.
03:51There's a meeting in London this week to look at reopening the Straits of Hormuz.
03:55All of these kind of things that shows that, you know, where they are treated as partners, the Europeans are
04:01willing to step up.
04:02Keir Starmer, the U.K. Prime Minister, has this morning called for closer defence and security ties with Europe.
04:09Is this the beginning of a more self-reliant Europe and European security architecture?
04:17Absolutely. And in fact, this has been on the books for a long time already, even before President Trump came
04:24back for his second term.
04:25I mean, it's clear that if the United States would be foolhardy to abandon NATO altogether,
04:33that shift which I mentioned towards more European self-reliance has been ongoing for a while.
04:39If you look at NATO today, the Europeans are much more visible in Eastern Europe in the day-to-day
04:44collective defence.
04:45than they were during the Cold War.
04:48And they accept the need to take more responsibility for Ukraine and step up their efforts.
04:53So this has been going on for a long time.
04:55But of course, it's better done in a calm atmosphere and gradually than in response to a crisis,
05:03because President Trump now wants to do something unwise and dramatic.
05:08Who knows when it comes to the future U.S. role in NATO?
05:12It's best done as a part of a transatlantic partnership than as a result of the U.S. retreating back
05:17into isolation.
05:18Jamie, good to see you. Thanks for that.
05:20Jamie Shea, former NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General.
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