Donald Trump, NATO, And The Market For Kids’ Desks

On the one hand, I feel sorry for today’s 6-year-olds who have to do active shooter drills in their elementary schools.

On the other hand, in Mrs. Gallo’s first-grade class outside Trenton, New Jersey, in 1963, we practiced hiding under our desks with our hands over our heads to protect ourselves in case of nuclear war.  (I think we did this in the downstairs cafeteria, so we must have assumed that we’d get a few minutes warning before the apocalypse, but my memory of this is quickly growing dim.)

To each generation its own fears.

What should our fears be today, given President Donald Trump’s America First policy?

For decades, the United States has offered a nuclear defense, free of charge, to other countries in the world. On the one hand, the United States profited from this: The world was generally peaceful; we had a lot of allies; no nuclear holocaust occurred.

On the other hand, the U.S. spent hundreds of billions of uncompensated dollars protecting the entire free world. We had trouble balancing our budget; other countries paid very little for their own defenses.

It took real faith for other countries to put their survival in the hands of the United States. Would the United States really launch a nuclear counterattack, putting New York and Washington, D.C., at risk, if the Soviets decided to attack Berlin, or Rome, or Taipei, or Tokyo?  For decades, Berliners, and the rest, apparently believed that we would. The presence of many American troops in Europe and elsewhere also made the guarantee of safety more credible: The Soviets couldn’t nuke Germany without killing thousands of American troops stationed there, which made it more likely that the U.S. would respond.

Kiss those days goodbye.

Trump says that NATO is dead. French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this week that Europe should develop strategic independence from the United States. Friedrich Merz, likely the next chancellor of Germany, explained that his “absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”

I guess we all agree that Europe will no longer depend on the American nuclear umbrella to protect it. And since the United States is intent on withdrawing many of its troops from Europe, the tripwire — nuke Europe and you’re nuking U.S. citizens — is vanishing. It’s time for Europe to go it alone.

This is fine, of course, unless nuclear proliferation offends you. Since the end of World War II, Berlin has been happy to rely on the United States in case of a Soviet attack. Will Berlin be equally willing to rely on the United Kingdom or France to protect it? If not, might Berlin develop its own nuclear weapons, so that Berlin will not, like Blanche DuBois, be reliant on “the kindness of strangers“? As the United States deserts NATO, my best guess is that Germany goes nuclear.

Trump also declined last week to say that the United States would defend Taiwan if China attacked it. In the past, Trump’s noted that Taiwan is 9,000 miles away from the United States; Trump gets a lot of stuff wrong, but he’s pretty damn close on that one. Frankly, if I lived in Taipei, I’d doubt that Trump would come to my defense if China attacked my country. I wouldn’t make the mistake that Ukraine made in the 1990s, handing away the nuclear weapons that it possessed in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. I’d instead learn the lesson of the past few years. (Come to think of it, Muammar Gaddafi made the same mistake in Libya. He abandoned his nuclear weapons program in 2003 and was deposed and killed in 2011. I think future tyrants will choose to stay alive. Next time you see him, ask Kim Jong Un what he thinks on this subject.)

So Germany and Taiwan will develop nuclear weapons.

Who’s next?

South Korea? Will the United States really put New York at risk to defend Seoul? Or should South Korea develop its own nuclear defense?

Japan? Same questions about risking New York for Tokyo.

Some countries in the Middle East?

I worry about what the world will look like by the end of Trump’s America First campaign. Maybe I should buy some kids’ desks for my grandchildren, so they’ll have a safe place to hide during the apocalypse.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

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