Donald Trump 'Right' in NATO Criticism, Allied Official Says

Former President Donald Trump's repeated broadsides against NATO have been met with simultaneous winces and nods among the alliance's 31 members, most of whom are still not meeting the bloc's cornerstone military spending target agreed a decade ago.

Trump's suggestion earlier this month that he would encourage Russia to do "whatever the hell they want" to NATO nations not meeting their spending obligations was predictably met with indignation in the U.S., at NATO headquarters, and in other alliance nations.

However, the underlying premise—that allied nations are dragging their feet on security—appears accurate, particularly on the 2014 pledge by all nations to spend a minimum of 2 percent of GDP on their armed forces within a decade.

"The criticism is right, if you take away the rhetoric," Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told Newsweek on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany on Friday.

As with many aspects of his foreign policy, Trump's campaign against NATO is a bombastic expression of long-held bipartisan American frustration. "All the different U.S. presidents have said the same thing: Europe must pay more; everybody must follow the 2 percent," Tsahkna said.

Newsweek has contacted a Trump campaign spokesperson via email to request comment.

In his first term, Trump's bite was less severe than his bark for NATO. The former president threatened to withdraw from the alliance, for example, but also oversaw a collective rise in military and a strengthening of the allied shield on its eastern flank.

First-term Trump rhetoric whiplashed NATO. The Republican defended the alliance against French President Emmanuel Macron's suggestion that the bloc was experiencing "brain death," even while picking fights with fellow leaders and openly denigrating Article 5—the collective defense commitment that is the cornerstone of the transatlantic pact.

Allied capitals are already gaming out what another Trump presidency might look like. There is broad agreement that a second term would see a more experienced, more divisive politician less restrained by the so-called "adults in the room" that held key posts in his first administration.

"I was defense minister when Trump became the president, and their vocabulary was strong at this time as well," Tsahkna said. "Most important is what the U.S. will do, whether the president will be Trump, or Biden will continue, or whoever."

"We don't know," Tsahkna said when asked what Europe should expect. "We must do our job, we must fulfill our commitments, and we must prepare. We must understand that Europe must do more."

Buoyed by rising defense spending—NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that 18 of 31 allies would hit the 2 percent of GDP mark by the end of 2024—new members in Finland and likely soon Sweden, and a slow but significant reanimation of the continent's defense industrial sector, Tsahkna said Europe is in better shape than it was.

But, the minister said, internal disputes—even rhetorical—can be distracting. "For us, as frontliners, we have seen these troops, this readiness from the Russian side," Tsahkna said, referring to the units traditionally arrayed along Baltic frontiers intended for a potential future war. Though many of those have now been sent to—and killed or maimed in—Ukraine, officials believe Russia intends to reconstitute its forces there.

"When we discuss what Trump means or doesn't, this is a bad thing," Tsahkna said. "This is a psychological war, a communication war, especially when [Putin] says he loves Biden more than Trump. This is all the election campaign, but election campaigns are very serious things.

"The fighting in the U.S. to get rid of this Ukraine package, it's a very bad message," the minister said.