A suspicious Europe awaits Rubio with the future of online NATO

Washington (AP) – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio goes this week to a rally of better diplomats from NATO countries and is sure to find alarmed alarms, angry and confused by the Trump administration to restore links with Russia and its Climbing of rhetorical attacks on longtime transatlantic partners.

The allies are deeply concerned about President Donald Trump’s will to get closer to the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who considers NATO as a threat, in the midst of a American effort to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine. The recent comments and insults of the White House directed against the Allies of NATO and Denmark – as well as the military alliance itself – only increased anxiety, in particular as New American prices take effect Against friends and enemies.

Rubio arrives in Brussels Thursday for two days of meetings with its NATO counterparts and its European officials, and it can expect to be confronted with Questions about the future American role in the alliance.

For 75 years, NATO has been anchored on American leadership and on the basis of what they saw and heard since Trump took office in January, European officials have expressed profound concerns Let Trump can upset all this when he and other NATO leaders meet for a June summit in the Netherlands.

Can Rubio reassure the allies?

As Rubio did last month to a Meeting of the Group of 7 Foreign Affairs Industrialized democracies, the first American diplomat, which is considered by many stars as a more pragmatic and less dogmatic member of the Trump administration, can be able to recover a wizarded group consensus on the War in Ukraine.

It’s even like Trump said this week that Ukraine “Was never going to be a member of NATO” despite the leaders declaring at the top of last year that the country was on a “Irreversible” path to join.

But Rubio will find it difficult to explain Washington’s uninsured verbal attacks against NATO Canada allies, which Trump says he wants to claim as 51st stateand Denmark, including Territory of Greenland he says that the United States should annex. The two were accused of being “bad allies” by Trump and vice-president JD Vance.

“It is quite clear that none of the two territories is interested in joining a Trumpian America,” said Ian Kelly, American ambassador in Georgia during the Obama administration and the first Trump administration and now a professor of international studies at the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

“There will be a lot of very anxious euros on what Trump is going to ask and the announcements he will make,” he said. “If it is not already, Rubio will be in a mode of trying to reassure the European allies that we are not, in fact, not reliable.”

However, in a little less than two months, NATO was shaken to its heart, questioned more and more by Russia and the greatest land war in Europe since 1945 from the outside and by the Trump administration of the interior, breaking with decades of relatively predictable American leadership.

Trump has always complained Defense expenses for NATO members And even raised doubts about US engagement in Mutual Defense In the founding treaty of the Alliance, which indicates that an attack on a member of NATO is considered an attack on all.

Europeans take more security guarantees

Since the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, warned last month that American security priorities are elsewhere – in Asia and at its own borders – Europeans have waited to find out how important military withdrawal could be in Europe and how speed could happen.

In Europe and Canada, governments work on “Shifting” charges “plans To take control of the charge, while trying to ensure that no safety vacuum cleaner is created if the American troops and equipment are removed from the continent.

These allies wish to hear Rubio what are the intentions of the Trump administration and hope to obtain a sort of roadmap which will present what will happen and when, so that they can synchronize planning and Use European forces to fill the gaps.

At the same time, NATO deterrent effect against an adversary like Russia is only credible when supported by American fireplace. For Europeans and Canada, this means that US nuclear weapons and the 6th fleet must remain stationed in Europe.

“America is essential for credible deterrence,” NATO’s main diplomat told journalists on condition of anonymity to speak before the meeting.

About 100,000 American soldiers are deployed across the continent. European allies believe that at least 20,000 staff sent by the Biden administration after the launch of its large -scale invasion of Ukraine could be withdrawn.

Another priority for American allies is to understand if Trump thinks that Russia is still the greatest threat of security. In their statement from the summit last year, NATO leaders insisted that “Russia remains the most important and direct threat to the security of allies”.

But Trump’s receptivity to Putin and the recent favorable remarks of certain US officials have raised doubts. The question, according to diplomats, is the reason why the allies should spend 5% of their gross domestic product on their defense budgets if Russia is no longer a threat.

At the same time, Europeans and Canada know that they must spend more – especially to protect themselves and continue to arm Ukraine. At their next summit in June, NATO leaders should pass the alliance’s military budgetary objective from at least 2% to more than 3%.

Rubio “is in a very difficult position,” said Jeff Rathke, president of the American-Allemman Institute of Johns Hopkins University. Trump “tried to convince the allies that an American realignment with Russia is in the best interest of the United States and probably Europe, and at the same time telling them that they must double their defense expenses to face the threats posed by Russia,” he said. “The logical question they will ask is” why? ” »»

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Cook reported in Brussels.