President Donald Trump’s threats to break with NATO are doing real damage to the United States’ most crucial military alliance, former defense and diplomatic officials who worked in Democratic and Republican administrations warned Thursday — saying they may only embolden Russia.
Trump upended this week’s NATO summit in Brussels by threatening that the United States might “go our own way” if NATO allies don’t dramatically boost their military spending.
While European leaders will probably dismiss those words as mere bluster — especially as the U.S. beefs up its military presence — the former officials said Trump is fraying the common bond that undergirds the alliance President Harry Truman established at the dawn of the Cold War.
(...)
Russia's foreign policy, including its cyberattacks on the democratic process in Western countries and 2014 invasion of Ukraine, is widely believed to be focused on dividing — and therefore weakening — the resolve of the Western alliance.
“It plays Russia’s game of trying to weaken NATO,” former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said of Trump's remarks. “And that’s the last thing that the United States ought to be part of.”
Trump had previously questioned the utility of the alliance during his insurgent 2016 presidential campaign, at one point labeling the alliance “obsolete” and suggesting that he would review whether NATO nations have met their financial obligations when considering coming to their defense.
(...)
Retired U.S. Navy Adm. James Stavridis, who served as the top commander of NATO under Obama, said tension between the U.S. and other alliance members "has never been higher in my experience."
"While the message of encouraging higher defense spending by the Europeans is a sensible one," he said, "the style of the messenger will cause long-term degradation in alliance trust and confidence over time."
Read More: Trump ‘plays Russia’s game’ with NATO attacks, former officials say (Politico)