What do Trump's latest comments on leaving Nato mean for the alliance?
Trump has criticised Nato members for showing a lack of support for US objectives in Iran.
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What do Trump's latest comments on leaving Nato mean for the alliance? 13 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Lyse Doucet Chief international correspondent Of all the warnings in President Trump's arsenal, quitting the Nato military alliance is among those he's wielded the most. Now he's doing it again. Asked by Britain's Telegraph newspaper if he is reconsidering US membership of Nato, he said: "Oh yes… I would say [it's] beyond reconsideration" – fuming again that his partners weren't joining America's military operations, alongside Israel, against Iran. "I just think it should be automatic," he emphasised in his remarks to the paper. Trump's invective underlines again his misunderstanding of how this 32-member alliance works. Nato's Article 5 does commit it to collective defence. An attack against one member is deemed to be an attack against all but invoking this principle requires a consensus. And the 1949 treaty only referred to crises in Europe and North America. One ally after another has held back from joining a war they weren't consulted on, given they still don't understand its goals in the face of mixed messaging from the Trump administration. Article 5 has only been triggered once, in the wake of the September 11th attacks on the US in 2001. Trump also referenced Ukraine in the Telegraph, saying: "We've been there automatically, including Ukraine." After Russia's audacious full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the then-US President Joe Biden did take a leading role in shaping the response of individual Western governments because he believed President Putin's actions threatened them all. Nato, as an alliance, provided assistance but avoided the dangerous prospect of becoming directly involved as a party to this conflict. Even before Trump entered the White House in 2017, he repeatedly dismissed Nato as a "paper tiger," described it as "obsolete", and said that it was "costing a fortune" for the US. Trump to give primetime address...
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