Trump Considers Withdrawing US From Nato

US President Donald Trump, a longtime critic of Nato, has stepped up his rhetoric warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” after allies refused to join the US-Israel war on Iran.

Trump has long been vocally sceptical about the benefit of Nato membership to the US, and is implied to disagree with how the North Atlantic allies have refused to take part in the month-long, faltering US-Israeli assault on Iran. Even though it could be politically and constitutionally difficult for Trump to formally withdraw from the 1949 Washington treaty, Nato’s founding document, Ivo Daalder, who was the US permanent representative at Nato headquarters from 2009 to 2013, said the serious damage to the alliance had already been done, stating that it’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defence.

Trump launched the war on Iran on 28 February in partnership with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but without consulting Nato allies. He did not invoke article 5 of the treaty, which triggers collective defence from other members in the event of an “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America”. More than a month into the war, there is no sign of the regime change or collapse that Trump and Netanyahu had hoped for, and Tehran’s response by closing the economically vital strait of Hormuz has caused an oil price surge and a worldwide shortage of fertilizers and other essential goods.