Trump’s epic folly comes back to bite him

The other day Trump and his retinue held a collective prayer meeting at the Oval Office. Trump sat at his desk with the best expression of mystic transport he could muster and hold long enough for the camera to do its job.

A dozen or so people behind him, cabinet members and White House staffers, were laying their hands on Trump’s shoulders, and I for one was deeply moved – to run out of the room, with my hand to my mouth.

This wasn’t an expression of true religiosity. It was a photo-op with a fundamentalist Protestant dimension. However, if Trump or some of the extras are indeed fundamentalist Protestants, they must know their Bible.

Hence they remember Galatians 6:7, where Paul says: “As you sow, so shall you reap”. This proverbial quotation goes a long way towards explaining Trump’s current predicament.

I’ve had countless arguments with MAGAlomaniacs among my American friends who seem to believe that the US can go it alone with no need for any NATO allies. One point I often made and they inevitably rejected was that Trump’s behaviour in general and his treatment of America’s allies in particular may lower the country’s global prestige.

“We don’t care about that,” retorted one of my interlocutors, with a smirk turning into laughter. Now it turns out his mirth, an echo of his idol’s pronouncements, was misplaced.

America needs her allies after all, for even the almighty US Navy on its own can’t seem to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping. However, European NATO members are in no hurry to accede to Trump’s request for assistance.

He is predictably irate: “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO”.

Does this mean that a positive response would paint NATO’s future in nothing but luridly bright colours? Not according to, well, Trump, as he was before a need for joint action arose.

Ever since 1987, when he first published his political views in a series of newspaper ads, Trump has taken little trouble to conceal his contempt for NATO and all its members. This started a crescendo that, during his second term, culminated in a rousing finale of derision.

European NATO members, thundered Trump, are nothing but freeloading spongers on the US. They refuse to “pay up” (fund their own defence), instead choosing to spend money on welfare, immigrants and all sorts of degenerate, distinctly un-American practices.

Push come to shove, Trump was shouting, they had always refused to fight shoulder to shoulder with Americans. In fact, 457 British soldiers died during America’s latest foray into Afghanistan. And the 2003 US-led Coalition of the Willing included Britain and Poland from the start, with a dozen other European countries joining in later.

Far be it from me to accuse a US president of lying. So let’s just say charitably that Trump is misinformed — or else got carried away. This, however, doesn’t mean that all of his accusations are unfounded.

His arguments tend to be monochromatic and expressed in the terms one can overhear in any dingy bar close to chucking-out time. The real issues are more involved, and they require a more nuanced discussion.

For it isn’t true that America has been beggaring herself to protect Europe from all kinds of nasties, mainly Russia. In fact, ever since America became “the arsenal of democracy” during the Second World War, she has been clipping the coupons of being a great industrial power and the world’s financial hub.

Still, it’s true that Western Europe’s reluctance to build up its own defences is negligent, borderline criminal. While Poland and the Baltics have been feverishly arming themselves to resist a likely Russian aggression, the Western part of Europe has been regrettably lackadaisical in that respect.

Prodded by Trump, Western European countries have belatedly undertaken to boost their military spending, but they are sluggish in acting on that commitment. Germany recently broke the mould, but Britain, for one, talks big while carrying a cream-puff stick.

Serious, constructive criticism was definitely called for, but – and this is something my MAGAlomaniac friends don’t understand – what matters isn’t only substance but also style. It’s one thing gently to remind an overweight friend of the benefits of sensible diets, quite another to call him a ‘lard arse’.

But Trump doesn’t do understatement. He sees Europe as an anachronistic, moribund irrelevance and clearly prefers to do business with serious players, such as Putin. He has never treated any European leader with the same admiring deference he reserves for the mass murderer in the Kremlin.

Whenever they incur his displeasure, he hits them with rude harangues and blackmailing threats. At other times, he ignores them.

Nor is it just style. Trump has described NATO as “obsolete” and its Article 5 as strictly optional, hinting in the process that he may withdraw the US from the Alliance at the drop of a hat.

To stop being “ripped off” by greedy Europeans, Trump hit all of them with punitive tariffs, while doing his level best to ease the sanctions on Russia. Moreover, he has threatened two NATO members, Canada and, more credibly, Denmark, with military invasion.

This alone is enough to show that, in his mind, NATO is already defunct as a meaningful alliance. Or rather that’s how Trump felt before Americans began to pay through the nose for petrol. They still pay about a third of European prices, but still – filling stations have been known to be a major factor of domestic politics.

When opening the Strait of Hormuz became an economic and political necessity, Trump found a use for NATO: “We have a thing called Nato,” he said. “We’ve been very sweet. We didn’t have to help them with Ukraine. Ukraine is thousands of miles away from us . . . But we helped them. Now we’ll see if they help us. Because I’ve long said that we’ll be there for them but they won’t be there for us. And I’m not sure that they’d be there.”

Right. So America didn’t help the Ukraine out of respect for international law and the genuine need to stop Russian aggression. Such incidentals don’t matter because the Ukraine is so far from America that the US has no dog in that fight. The US only agreed to help out of the kindness of Trump’s heart.

Actually, the bulk of US aid was delivered to the Ukraine under that devil incarnate, Joe Biden. Under Trump, direct US aid stopped, and European countries have to pay cash on the nail for American weaponry, which they then transfer to the Ukraine.

Anyway, applying the same geographical logic, why should we send our ships to Iran, seeing it’s thousands of miles from Britain? Moreover, when our nonentity of a PM belatedly agreed to send a warship to the Middle East three days into the war, Trump dismissed him like an inept servant.

The war, he said, was won in one day. We did that without Britain, so she can keep her ships. Now, 17 days later, the war is still going on, and Britain is needed.

Starmer’s refusal to take part in the war from the beginning was craven and stupid. Britain and the rest of Europe have a vested interest in putting paid to Iran’s regime and keeping the shipping lanes open for oil tankers.

Moreover, the whole point of NATO is that it imposes moral and contractual obligations on its members to act together. “That’s what allies are for,” as Margaret Thatcher put it in the context of another war.

We must act, and we must act now. But, once the conflict is over, perhaps NATO countries should call a conference to remind one another, and explain to Trump, how vital NATO still is. The Alliance has been protecting the West since 1949, and the need for such protection is now as urgent as ever.

No country, not even one as powerful as the US, can take on evil regimes one on one. As Ben Franklin famously said in a different context, “We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”