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Arne O. Holm says:
Is Donald Trump's Actual Target NATO?
Comment: NATO's legitimacy depends on it being perceived as a defense pact, that the organisation is not defined as an aggressor by its enemies. Yet, the fundamental pillar of the defense pact is now under threat.
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This is a comment written by a member of the editorial staff. All views expressed are the writer's own.
The current situation is quite absurd. In the North, where we are located, 30,000 NATO soldiers are currently practicing to defend the Arctic and the High North from an attack from Russia. American forces are also partaking in the exercise.
Threats against NATO
On 'the other side' of the globe, the US president demands that NATO participate in the war of aggression against Iran. The demand goes hand in hand with threats that it will cost NATO dearly if they don't show up.
Once again, one can easily state that Trump is directing the world's greatest military force without knowledge and insight. The void in his geopolitical understanding is greater than the ballroom he is building in the White House.
As the largest NATO member, if the measure is the number of lethal weapons, Trump was quick to give a confronting message about NATO's defensive ambition. The Department of Defense was equipped with a leader recruited from the reactionary TV station Fox News, and later renamed the Department of War.
Pete Hegseth barely had any leadership experience, but in contrast to Trump, he had not evaded military service. Still, enough to become a sort of Pinocchio in Trump's puppet show.
The USA is an imperialist and colonial power at the same time.
Big shoes
Today, Hegseth walks around in shoes that are too big for him, quite literally. One of Trump's many fetishes is guessing his coworkers' shoe size and giving them shoes. The guess for Hegseth was a couple of sizes too big, but he is too scared not to wear them. Thus, he displays a spine that is as robust as the jello in a child's birthday party.
Most NATO countries have been clear in their rejection of Trump's demands to participate in the war against Iran. "It is not their war," is the reply.
Anything else would be completely devastating to NATO. The experiences from Libya and Afghanistan support this aversion.
But it goes deeper than that. Through the wars against Venezuela and Iran, with the subsequent demands of deciding who will lead the countries after the bombs have spoken, Donald Trump has reinstated an imperialism that the US has, at times, claimed to be a guarantor against.
The threats to take over Greenland and Cuba add colonization to this tragedy.
His only true friend
His only true friend in his perception of the world is Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Perhaps also China, which no longer needs to look for an opening to attack Taiwan.
It is in this landscape that NATO is to fight for its credibility as a defense pact, while simultaneously standing shoulder to shoulder with traditional imperialism and colonialism, in which the ability to annihilate countries trumps the right to do so.
Repeated insistence that NATO is a defense, not an attack, is under brutal attack from its most important ally.
