How Trump could punish Nato allies — Global News Podcast

[0:00] Welcome to the Global News Podcast from the BBC. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and we're joined by our [0:05] security correspondent Frank Gardner. And Frank, today we're talking about the continued row between [0:11] President Trump and NATO and specifically what some are calling this naughty and nice list of [0:18] good and bad allies. Who is on it and why? Well, he pretty much dislikes the whole of Europe. He's [0:25] very upset with NATO's European members for failing in his words or in his view to join in [0:33] with the US-Israel attack on Iran that began on February the 28th. NATO members are a bit perplexed [0:42] by this because it's a defensive alliance. Its focus is very much on trying to protect Europe from [0:48] Russia's advances in the eastern Ukraine and trying to support Ukraine. But nevertheless, [0:54] he is upset about this. And this has trickled down into the so-called Department of War, i.e. the [1:01] Pentagon, the US military. And they, in this leaked email, they appear to be looking at proposals for [1:07] punishing those European nations, specifically Spain, as mentioned, and the UK. Spain, where there [1:14] are two US bases, refused the use of those bases to the US during its assault on Iran. And the [1:24] Pentagon said, look, an official has said an absolute baseline for us, a minimum, a bare minimum, what [1:30] we expect from NATO allies is something called ABO. So that's access, basing, and overflight. And all [1:40] the three of those were denied to the United States. So the US is talking about trying to suspend Spain [1:45] from NATO, which you can't do, by the way, it's not in NATO's charter. But of course, there are other [1:50] things that the US could do to, you know, to retaliate. And on the UK, the Pentagon email talks [1:58] about reviewing US support for Britain over the ownership of the Falkland Islands, which Argentina [2:06] refers to as Las Ias Malvinas, the Malvina Islands. They are claimed by Argentina, governed by Britain. [2:13] And the British prime minister's officer said, sovereignty is not up for discussion on this. [2:19] It's all about the right of the people who live there to choose who they want to belong to. And the [2:26] last census showed 99% plus wanted to stay British. You mentioned the alternative punishments. If, [2:34] for example, the US can't suspend Spain from NATO, what might those punishments be? And what about [2:40] the rewards for those countries model allies, as the US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth calls them, [2:45] who step up? Well, let's just start with what the email doesn't say. And there is no more talk in it, [2:52] mercifully, for NATO, of the US pulling out. We already know that the US considers that it's been [3:01] paying far too high a burden financially for Europe's defence, which it has. I mean, President Trump is [3:07] absolutely right on that. So what could they do? Well, they could draw down some of the personnel [3:16] they've got stationed in Europe, which would be a real worry to Europe. I mean, US is by far and [3:22] away the biggest, most important partner in the NATO alliance, by far. You know, it outnumbers [3:32] everybody by a huge amount. And of course, it's a nuclear state. So if it were to withdraw that support, [3:38] while still saying it's in NATO, you know, it could do that. But I think it would probably need [3:42] congressional approval. And I'm not sure he would get it. He'd certainly need congressional approval, [3:47] two thirds majority to withdraw the US from NATO. But President Trump is somebody who, as we know, [3:53] doesn't play by normal rules. He like he's a, you know, he's an upsetter, he likes to tip up the chess [3:59] board. So who knows what he would do in terms of rewarding those countries, financial things, tariffs, [4:07] or lack of economically support for parties. Remember that the US has interfered quite [4:14] substantially in the last 12 months or so to support parties and political movements that are [4:21] in many cases absolutely contrary to the democratically elected government in power. And that's [4:28] placed further strain on Europe's relationships with Washington. [4:33] Now, there's one quote from an official who says they want to decrease the sense of entitlement [4:41] among these European nations. Do they have a point? I mean, you suggested that some European [4:47] nations aren't spending enough, but are there more things than that? [4:50] Well, I think I said again, I think Donald Trump is absolutely right when he says that Europe has been [4:59] kind of freeloading off the US for a long time when it comes to defence expenditure. [5:04] I mean, Poland and Romania are pretty much frontline states and Poland is massively boosting its military. [5:10] It's going to have one of the strongest and best equipped armies in Europe. They spend a far higher [5:16] percentage of their GDP, close to 4% than most other NATO countries. Britain is still sort of struggling [5:23] to get from 2.3 to 2.5, while countries like Estonia, which are right up next to Russia, are spending [5:30] close to 5%. There was a thing called the peace dividend. So when the Cold War ended in 1991, [5:36] with the collapse of the Soviet Union, governments in the West say, great, we don't really have to [5:41] worry about Russia anymore. Let's spend all the money that or lots of the money that we were spending on [5:46] all these guns and weapons and defence and tanks and stuff. Let's spend it instead on the stuff that [5:51] people need, schools and hospitals and roads and welfare. And that was perfectly justified for [5:57] many, many years. The problem is that the peace dividend has gone on for far longer than most [6:03] people say it should. Now, some would disagree, I know. But the fact is that Russia is positioning [6:10] itself in many ways for the day when, God forbid, there could be a war between Russia and the West. [6:16] And there simply isn't enough money in the kitty. There hasn't been for some time. Of course, [6:22] America spends an absolutely vast, practically a trillion dollars a year on their defence budget. [6:29] I mean, it's something like 900 billion US. It's huge. And they consider that NATO is what Donald [6:38] Trump calls a paper tiger, that it's all talk and it doesn't really have the muscle to back it. And that [6:43] if the US were to pull out, which it hasn't done yet, but if it were to refuse to take part in a [6:49] NATO operation to defend its borders, say, that Europe would be pretty weak and defenceless. [6:55] Now, President Trump has taken a dim view of NATO for many years, but does the US get anything out of [7:02] it? Yes, of course it does. There's something called Article 5, which is in NATO's charter. And it's [7:09] it's probably the most important article in the NATO charter. And that is that it considers an attack [7:15] on one country is an attack on all. And the attacked country has the right to call on NATO, [7:22] all the other members to come and come to its defence. Now, that article has only been triggered [7:27] once. And that was after the 9-11 attacks on September the 11th, 2001. Who triggered it? The United [7:35] States. And what that meant was that the US went to war in Afghanistan to kick out the Taliban, which [7:42] they did for 20 years, supported by Britain, and followed by a huge number of NATO countries. [7:49] So you had countries like Romania, Estonia, Canada, Denmark, all deploying troops in support of that US [7:57] operation, hundreds, thousands of miles away from themselves. They didn't need to do it, but they did it [8:04] to support the United States. So it is utterly insulting to those countries that lost troops [8:11] to imply, as Donald Trump did a few weeks or months ago, that it was only really US troops that did the [8:17] fighting. They did the fighting as well, and they paid a price for it. And he is totally ungrateful for [8:23] that. So there's a lot of bad blood, frankly, between the White House and a lot of these NATO countries, [8:28] because they feel underappreciated and that his remarks are insulting to them. [8:33] This latest row leaves NATO in a difficult position. What does it mean for the organisation [8:39] in the long term, particularly with regards to Russia and China? [8:44] Well, it's yet a further reminder that Europe is going to have to do more to look after its own defence. [8:49] And this isn't just about shoring up borders or spending more money. It's about having a long, [8:57] hard look at whether Europe has got the industrial capacity to sustain a conflict. Britain, for example, [9:04] has sent a huge amount of its arsenal to Ukraine. They don't have any more AS-90 self-propelled guns [9:12] anymore. They've all gone to Ukraine. They're having to import Swedish archer systems, artillery systems, [9:17] Britain's army. It would struggle to produce a division, even a brigade, frankly, some generals [9:26] have said in combat and certainly would not be able to last much beyond about a week. So it's about [9:34] your sustainability just as much as the punch that you can deliver on day one. And the really scary [9:41] thing about this is that because Europe has run down its conventional armies so much, and it doesn't [9:49] have tactical nuclear weapons in size. There are a few US gravity bombs that are stationed in the [9:55] Netherlands and Turkey. But the US is an unreliable partner, so it's by no means certain that the US [10:03] would come in and use those. And what it means is on something called the escalatory ladder, that's the [10:10] sort of how you jump up the ladder. Right, but if you're going to do this, we're going to do that, [10:14] and then we're going to retaliate with this. The escalatory ladder lacks the middle rungs for most [10:21] European nations, including the UK and France. They don't have the tactical nuclear warheads, [10:28] ones that you would use on the battlefield or in short range or medium range missiles that Russia has. [10:34] So Russia could escalate that. And Europe's only response would be to either capitulate [10:41] or to escalate further and say, you stop it right now or we go strategic nuclear. [10:46] You know, that's where you talk about flattening cities. That's the stuff that floats around under, [10:51] you know, in submarine silos under the Atlantic that are end of days. So it's a very worrying situation. [10:59] Frank, thank you. Frank Gardner, our security correspondent. And if you'd like to hear more [11:03] from the global news podcast, click on the link below. Thanks for watching.