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Telegraph
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Trump comes, not to bury Nato, but to save it
This week Nato will mark its first 76 years at its summit in The Hague. All eyes will be on Donald Trump and his robust 'America First' approach on the world stage, which has already involved the use of decisive military force against Iran's nuclear facilities. The US president has been a firm critic of Nato, but has also been responsible for a dramatic revival of the alliance. Trump has made it clear that Nato's survival depends on America's fellow members stepping up to fully participate in burden sharing with the US. The Russians have clearly viewed Nato as weak and divided and are increasingly willing to test its resolve. The US presidency must apply concerted pressure on America's allies to do far more to foster partnership rather than dependency, especially as the United States must increasingly focus on the immense threat in the Indo-Pacific presented by Communist China. In 2024, only 22 Nato members spent the 2 per cent of GDP on defence agreed to by the alliance in 2014. This is unacceptable. It leaves the alliance dangerously vulnerable when it should be projecting strength and resolve. Countries that spent less than 2 per cent of real GDP on defence last year included Italy (1.5 per cent), Canada (1.4 per cent), Spain (1.3 per cent), and Belgium (1.3 per cent). In contrast, Poland (4.1 per cent), Estonia (3.4 per cent), Latvia (3.2 per cent), and Greece (3.1 per cent) all spent above 3 per cent of GDP. Justin Trudeau's now departed Canadian government was among the very worst Nato slackers, consistently underinvesting in Canada's military with shockingly low figures for a nation with the 10 th largest GDP in the world. His successor as prime minister, Mark Carney, has vowed to raise Canadian defence spending to 2 per cent, but this is simply not enough. Ottawa needs to be serious about Nato's mission, and playing a full part in the alliance in the coming decades. As Heritage Foundation research has shown, 'European Nato members have collectively underfunded their own defence by $827.91 billion since 2014 – nearly equal to the entire annual US defence budget.' This is a staggering figure – a damning indictment of a culture of complacency and dependency in many Nato allies over the past decade. Not only should every Nato member immediately invest the minimum agreed level of spending on their own defence, they should also commit to matching the current US level of 3.5 per cent of GDP, and pledge to reach 5 per cent of GDP, which is expected to be the new benchmark set at the forthcoming Nato summit according to Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte. President Trump's pressure on Nato partners to spend more on defence is already having a major impact. After decades of reckless underinvestment, Germany, the world's fourth-largest economy and the biggest in Europe, has announced plans for a dramatic increase in defence spending, and has accepted in principle that German spending must eventually rise to 5 per cent of GDP if it is serious about defending its own borders from a potential attack by Russia. France, which has barely reached the agreed minimum 2 per cent of GDP on defence in recent years, has announced that it will push European defence spending levels to 3-3.5 per cent of GDP ahead of the Hague summit. Even Belgium, one of Nato's most lacklustre members, has declared it will boost defence spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP. The UK has just announced a $20 billion investment in its nuclear warhead programme, and the construction of 12 nuclear-powered attack submarines, as part of its new Strategic Defence Review, released this month. The Baltic States and Poland are already building on their robust records by pledging significant further increases in the years ahead. Poland will spend 4.7 per cent of GDP on defence this year, while Estonia has committed to spending 5.4 per cent through until 2029. Lithuania will spend 5-6 per cent on defence from 2026 to 2030, and Latvia will spend 5 per cent by 2026. The positive developments in Europe should be warmly welcomed in Washington. In just the first few months of his presidency, Donald Trump has already significantly strengthened Nato. President Trump is not the alliance's destroyer, as his critics have alleged, but is in fact its saviour. Previous US presidents had urged European allies to do more, but their entreaties fell on deaf ears. It took the no-nonsense straight talk of Donald Trump to make European leaders sit up and take notice. In many ways the Trump presidency has been the antithesis of the weak-kneed Biden presidency. The humiliating debacle of Biden's reckless Afghanistan withdrawal would not have happened under Donald Trump, and nor would Russia's reckless invasion of Ukraine. With bold US leadership at the helm, Nato still has the vision, capacity and energy to thrive and prosper for another 76 years. American exceptionalism is the most powerful force for liberty in the world today. It is greatly strengthened by America's alliances with key partners, and Nato is at the very heart of the transatlantic partnership.
BBC News
14-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
How Trump's Africa strategy may become a double-edged sword
With US President Donald Trump on a cost-cutting warpath since starting his second term, aid to Africa has been slashed and now defence spending is in his sights - but could these approaches cost more in the long run?The phrase his administration presses on Europe to assume more of the costs of its own defence is "burden sharing". This is the challenge that Washington is now throwing down to African armies too - and they are far less comfortably resourced to take it having paid dearly in lives and money, in the struggle to hold back the spreading reach of jihadist armed groups across the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin and Somalia over recent years, they could be forgiven for feeling that they already carry much of the burden - and for the sake not just of their own continent but the wider international community which has lost more than 80 soldiers in jihadist attacks since the start of the year, is just one example. "The epicentre of terrorism on the globe" is how the Sahel was described a few days ago by Gen Michael Langley, who as head of US Africa Command (Africom) oversees the American military presence south of the briefings and interviews over the past few weeks, he has graphically outlined the threat that jihadist groups will present if their push southward towards the Gulf of Guinea succeeds."One of the terrorists' new objectives is gaining access to West African coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking and arms trading. This not only puts African nations at risk but also raises the chance of threats reaching US shores."Gen Langley has admitted that the current upsurge in militant attacks is "deeply concerning".Yet he has also repeatedly hammered home a core message: the US is minded to rein back its own sub-Saharan military operations, leaving local armies to take on more of the defence 6,500 personnel are currently deployed in Africa by the US military and a 2019 list published by Africom mentioned 13 "enduring" American bases across the continent and a further 17 more temporary some of these installations, including the purpose-built drone base at Agadez in Niger, have already been shut down, in particular after military juntas seized power in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso since it now looks as if the once-ambitious American operational footprint will be pruned back quite a lot we will see more air power deployed from offshore to hit militant targets - Gen Langley says there have been 25 strikes in Somalia this year, double the 2024 total - but a much thinner permanent on-the-ground military presence."Some things that we used to do, we may not do anymore," he recently told a conference in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that brought together chiefs of defence staff and other senior officers from 37 countries."Our aim is not to serve as a permanent crutch, but to achieve US security objectives that overlap with our partners. We should be able to help African nations build the self-reliance they need to independently confront terrorism and insurgencies."In the bluntness of his language Gen Langley reflects the stark change of outlook and policy that has come from January's change of power at the White House."We have set our priorities now - protecting the homeland."What matters to the no-longer-so-new Trump II administration, the general made clear in a Pentagon publication last week, is fighting terrorists - particularly those who might attack the priorities are countering the spread of Chinese military influence across Africa and protecting freedom of maritime navigation through key trade choke points such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. In some respects, the focus on training and capacity building that Gen Langley now expounds is not so very different from the approach of previous American administrations, Republican as well as lauds the National Guard State Partnership Program, through which individual US states have been helping to build the capacity of government security forces across Africa and other parts of the world - for the past three too is pursuing this approach, with the closure of bases in Chad and Senegal, while those in Ivory Coast and Gabon have been handed over to their governments, with only small French training teams left behind to work alongside African in other respects, the Trump administration's Africa strategy represents a drastic shrinkage in outlook and - critics might argue - a conscious retreat from addressing the factors that drive instability, conflict and terrorism, particularly in the Sahel, which is among the poorest regions on the under President Joe Biden the US looked far beyond the military realm alone in its efforts to counter the both the growing reach of jihadist groups and other sources of violence. And Gen Langley, as Africom chief, was an articulate exponent of this much broader last year, in an interview with the Associated Press news agency, he outlined what he described as a "whole of government" response to the proliferation of conflict, stressing the importance of good governance and action to tackle the fragilities of African states and the impacts of desertification, crop failure and environmental approach openly recognised that recruitment by armed groups and the spread of violence is fuelled not only by jihadist ideology, but also by a host of social and economic factors, including the stresses now afflicting farming and pastoralist Langley himself does not seem to have abandoned this analysis, recently noting how Ivory Coast had countered the jihadist threat to its northern border areas by complementing security force deployments with development could equally have pointed to the success of a similar approach pursued by the president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, before he was deposed in the July 2023 coup. But of course, these days Africom must operate within the context of a US foreign policy radically reshaped under are even rumours that it could be downgraded to become a subsidiary of the US command in Europe and Gen Langley suggests African governments should tell Washington what they thought of this the separate Africa unit at the radically slimmed down National Security Council at the White House is reportedly being wound up and integrated into the Middle East-North Africa director, Gen Jami Shawley, an Africa specialist appointed to the role only in March, has now been assigned to more general strategic Congress this week, Gen Langley warned about China's and Russia's African ambitions: Beijing's agility at capitalising on the US's absence and Moscow's ability to seize military opportunities created by chaos and these concerns, some might wonder if the general is discreetly signally his doubts about a slimmed down Africa under the "efficiency drive" led, until recently, by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the American government's main international development agencies, USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, have been effectively shut spine of the new US economic engagement with Africa is now private sector trade and business generally needs to operate in a stable and secure context - which Africa's most fragile and violence-prone regions cannot in winding up the American development agencies, the Trump administration has stepped aside from funding the rural projects and social programmes that sought to address land and water pressures and lack of economic opportunity, the key drivers of conflict - and the jihadist groups' recruitment of frustrated rural young the fragile regions that are the main sources of jihadist violence the US response is reduced to the purely military, and now it is seeking to shift even most of that on to the shoulders of African states that already struggle to respond adequately to a plethora of challenges and Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London. You may also be interested in: The region with more 'terror deaths' than rest of world combinedFreed captive tells BBC of life in West African jihadist baseWhy Trump is on the warpath in Somalia'My wife fears sex, I fear death' - impacts of the USAID freezeTrump's tariffs could be death knell for US-Africa trade pact Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
