The NATO Summit in Washington had two purposes: to recognize the 75 years of NATO and strengthen the defensive alliance and to substantively help Ukraine. The first was fanfare although its purpose was to encourage the remaining one third of NATO nations to spend on military more than 2% of its GDP. The remaining one third includes some serious members such as France and Germany, but also less serious members such as Canada, Slovenia, Spain, Belgium and extremely wealthy Luxembourg. Granted that Canada has an ocean as a buffer.
Nevertheless, with the Trump assassination attempt NATO must take into account that the United States will be missing in action as to Europe's defence against Russia. Senator J.D. Vance, now the Vice President under Trump posted about two hours after the incident: "Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination."
It is interesting that the shooter was a Republican and clearly an advocate for the Second Amendment and more so because he used an automatic weapon. For Senator Vance, an original hillbilly from Kentucky, that type of refutation of his assertion would be clouding the issues with facts. The Senator is not very cognitive when dealing with that type of argument despite his age.
This is clearly not what America is about and the election is certainly not over, but for the next three and one-half months that will be the MAGA message. Senator Vance is so clearly an extremist, but his message will resound.
And so it's relevant to consider NATO without the United States or at the very least without tangible American support.
The Washington Summit NATO statement was strong on Ukraine, but did it have substance. What exactly does “irreversible” mean?
“Taken forward the establishment of the NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training, and Education Centre (JATEC) is an important pillar of practical cooperation. We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements and decide its own future, free from outside interference. Ukraine’s future is in NATO. Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance. We welcome the concrete progress Ukraine has made since the Vilnius Summit on its required democratic, economic, and security reforms. As Ukraine continues this vital work, we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership. We reaffirm that we will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met. The Summit decisions by NATO and the NATO-Ukraine Council, combined with Allies’ ongoing work, constitute a bridge to Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Allies will continue to support Ukraine’s progress on interoperability as well as additional democratic and security sector reforms, which NATO Foreign Ministers will continue to assess through the adapted Annual National Programme.”
Frankly, within the NATO Charter, probably, no member state can explain what “irreversible” means. In addition or subtraction, the limitation on the range of armaments delivered by the United States and Germany was not removed. And so Russia is relatively safe from NATO weapons.
It was a bad week. NATO gave Ukraine no substance, Donald J. Trump became a martyr and J.D. Vance became the VP under Trump - a Kremlin Dream Team. Perhaps my callousness as to the assassination attempt is palpable although I am very sensitive to the fact that a human being died and several were injured in the attack.
There is a tremendous irony in all of this. There was a Summit, essentially for Ukraine, giving Ukraine little if any substantial relief. There was a tragic assassination attempt by a Republican who was an advocate of the 2nd Amendment and utilized automatic weapons, a vignette of America under Trump. The pictures are bizarre: Ukraine is no better off and Donald Trump will run for office as a martyr of the movement that he created with a VP that must have been toasted in Moscow.
