Will President Trump Renegotiate The NATO Treaty?

Dan Goure

Security,

Trump's sharpest criticism has been reserved for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

President-elect Donald Trump’s most consistent theme during his campaign for the nomination and then in the general election was that he would renegotiate or withdrawal from various international treaties and agreements in order to get a better outcome for America. He argued that the North American Free Trade Agreement had to be renegotiated in order to make it fairer. His opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership basically terminated the negotiations for this major trade agreement. Trump has said that he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Treaty on climate change because too much of the burdens it imposes falls on the U.S. and other industrialized countries. Both the President- and Vice President-elect have indicated that they would reverse the current administration’s opening to Cuba and re-impose the fifty year old embargo. Candidate Trump declared last March that “my number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” He accuses U.S. negotiators of having done a poor job arguing that Iran could legitimately develop a nuclear weapon in 15 years. Just yesterday he lambasted the World Trade Organization, declaiming that since it came into force the U.S. has lost 70,000 factories.

The incoming leader of the Free World also has been highly critical of many international security agreements, including some of this nation’s most important and enduring treaties. For example, Trump has argued that U.S. bilateral security treaties with South Korea and Japan are one-sided. Last year he observed that “if Japan gets attacked, we have to immediately go to their aid. If we get attacked, Japan doesn’t have to help us. That’s a fair deal?” At other times, he has argued for continuing the security relationships with Kuwait and Iraq only if those countries paid the U.S. in oil.