Washington – The United States Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, travels this week to a meeting of the main diplomats of NATO countries and will surely find alarmed allies, angry and confused by the desire of the Trump administration to restore ties with Russia and their Rhetorical attacks increasing in transatlantic partners for a long time.
The allies are deeply concerned about the disposition of President Donald Trump to approach the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who sees NATO as a threat, in the middle of a United States effort to negotiate fire in Ukraine. Recent comments and insults of the White House aimed at the allies of NATO Canada and Denmark, as well as the military alliance, have only increased anguish, especially as The new US tariffs are entering into force Against friends and enemies equally.
Rubio arrives in Brussels on Thursday during two days of meetings with his NATO counterparts and European officials, and can expect to be confronted with Questions about the future of the United States in the Alliance.
For 75 years, NATO has been anchored in American leadership and based on what they have seen and heard since Trump assumed the position in January, European officials have expressed deep concerns That Trump can turn all that when he and other NATO leaders meet for a June summit in the Netherlands.
As Rubio did last month in a Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the Group of 7 Industrialized democracies, the main diplomat of the United States, which many abroad consider a more pragmatic and less dogmatic member of the Trump administration, can save a diluted group consensus on the consensus of the diluted group on the diluted group on the War in Ukraine.
That is even like Trump said this week that Ukraine “I was never going to be a NATO member” despite the fact that the leaders declared at the top of last year that the country was in a “Irreversible” path to join.
But Rubio will be difficult to explain the non -provoking verbal attacks of Washington against the allies of NATO Canada, which Trump says he wants to claim as a state 51and Denmark, whose Greenland territory says that the United States should annex. Both have been accused of being “bad allies” by Trump and vice president JD Vance.
“It is quite clear that none of the territory has any interest in joining a Trumpiana América,” said Ian Kelly, ambassador of the United States in Georgia during the Obama and First Trump administration and now professor of international studies at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
“There will be many very anxious euros about what Trump is going to ask for and the ads he will do,” he said. “If he is still, Rubio will be in a way of trying to reassure European allies who, in fact, are not reliable.”
However, in a little less than two months, NATO has been shaken in its nucleus, increasingly challenged by Russia and the greatest land war in Europe since 1945 from the outside, and by the Trump administration from the inside, breaking with decades of relatively predictable US leadership.
Trump has constantly complained about Defense expenditure of NATO members And even He raised doubts about the United States commitment to mutual defense In the founding treaty of the Alliance, which says that an attack against an NATO member is considered an attack against all.
Since the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, warned last month that the United States security priorities are in another place, in Asia and on their own borders, Europeans have waited to learn how big a military deployment could be a military deployment in Europe and how fast it can happen.
In Europe and Canada, governments are working on “Load Change” Plans To take care of more than the load, while trying to ensure that no security vacuum is created if the American troops and teams withdraw from the continent.
These allies are eager to know about Rubio what are the intentions of the Trump administration and hope to ensure some type of road map that presents what will happen later and when, so that they can synchronize planning and Use European forces to connect any hole.
At the same time, NATO Dischain effect against an adversary like Russia It is only credible when backed by fire power. For Europeans and Canada, this means that the nuclear weapons of the United States and the 6th fleet must remain parked in Europe.
“The United States is indispensable due to credible deterrence,” said a main diplomat of NATO to journalists on anonymity to speak before the meeting.
Around 100,000 American troops are deployed throughout the continent. European allies believe that at least 20,000 people sent by the Biden administration after Russia launched its large -scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago could be withdrawn.
Another priority for American allies is to understand whether Trump believes that Russia still represents the greatest security threat. In his statement of the summit last year, NATO leaders insisted that “Russia remains the most significant and direct threat to the safety of allies.”
But Trump’s receptivity to Putin and the recent favorable comments of some US officials have raised doubts. The question, the diplomats say, is why allies should spend 5% of their gross domestic product in their defense budgets if Russia is no longer a threat.
At the same time, Europeans and Canada know that they must spend more, especially to protect themselves and continue Armando Ukraine. In their next summit in June, the NATO leaders are expected to increase the military budget objective of the Alliance of at least 2% to more than 3%.
Rubio “is in a very difficult position,” said Jeff Rathke, president of the American-German Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Trump “has tried to convince allies that a realignment of the United States with Russia is in the best interest of the United States and presumably Europe, and at the same time tell them that they need to double their defense expense to deal with the threats raised by Russia,” he said. “The logical question they will do is ‘Why?'”
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Cook reported from Brussels.
