NATO minister issues warning after Donald Trump’s victory

Europe must “urgently take more responsibility” for its own security, Poland’s foreign minister said, after Donald Trump won the US election and would return to the Oval Office early next year.

“Europe must urgently take more responsibility for its security,” Radoslaw Sikorski said on Wednesday. “The wind of history is blowing ever stronger. Poland’s leadership will rise to this challenge.”

Many countries in Europe are part of the European Union or NATO, sometimes both. NATO has been particularly important as a defense alliance for decades, although the United States has historically provided its European members with many expensive military capabilities as well as the alliance’s main nuclear deterrent.

Former president and current President-elect Trump repeatedly criticized the alliance and discussed withdrawing the United States from NATO during his time in office, senior administration officials said The New York Times in 2019.

Experts say that while Trump is unlikely to force the United States to withdraw from NATO, the coming years will be challenging for the alliance, not least because many countries have failed to prepare for Trump’s triumphant comeback.

There are pressing questions about how Europe will approach its own security under a second Trump presidency and who will take the helm in directing aid to Ukraine. Trump has said he would cut U.S. military aid to Ukraine if re-elected.

“This is a nasty surprise for most governments in Europe,” said former NATO official Edward Hunter Christie Newsweek on Wednesday. “European politicians feared – and they never hid it – that they feared the prospect of a second Trump presidency.”

Earlier this year, Trump said he would “encourage” Russia to launch attacks on any NATO countries that he said were failing to meet their financial obligations to the alliance. The Biden administration condemned the comments as “appalling and unhinged.”

“Trump has been very consistent, literally for decades, in thinking that America’s allies are free riders and free riders on America’s protection,” Hunter Christie said.

NATO members are supposed to spend around 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. However, this is not binding and several countries have not met this threshold, although new pushes in recent years have meant that many have now reached the target.

The NATO countries on the alliance’s eastern flank, close to Russia and the conflict in Ukraine, have stormed ahead of the Western European countries. Warsaw announced in the summer that it would spend five percent of its GDP on defense in 2025.

U.S. military aid is hugely important to Kiev, and European nations will likely struggle to support Ukraine’s fierce efforts without Washington.

“Most people expect, or at least fear, that Trump will likely slow and eventually stop or significantly reduce U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which will put the Europeans in an almost impossible situation,” Hunter Christie said.