'Something may go very, very wrong': European diplomats fear Trump 'shooting from the hip'

11 April 2024

European diplomats have reportedly been blitzing Washington to meet with allies of former President Donald Trump to gauge how he would handle foreign policy crises in the region should he win a second term.

CNN reported Thursday that chief among Europe's concerns about Trump winning the November election are how he may change the US' relationship with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and whether he would be committed to helping Ukraine fend off the ongoing Russian offensive in its easternmost regions. Diplomats who are preparing for another possible Trump presidency also admit that the ex-president's mercurial nature is a point of contention, with one unnamed senior diplomat telling CNN they're worried about his "random bursts of rage."

"It’s more the general, rather than the specific: something may go very, very wrong just because some decision is made – basically shooting from the hip, without enough information, without appreciation of the possible second or third order effects," the diplomat said.

Diplomats specifically said they were worried Trump would undermine Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that the alliance would come to the defense of any NATO ally that experiences an "armed attack." Trump has said in the past that he would exert pressure on NATO member states to meet their obligations under the treaty to spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. More recently, he has suggested he would let Russia — whose military NATO was established to defend against — "do whatever the hell they want" to a country that doesn't meet the 2% GDP threshold.

"We are getting a lot of calls from ambassadors, we know what they are doing, they are pumping us for information and trying to find out what will happen if Trump comes back in," an unnamed former Trump administration official told CNN, adding that they have had roughly 30 meetings in Washington with various European diplomats.

NATO countries are reportedly working to set up a $100 billion fund specifically for Ukraine to help the besieged nation defend itself against Russia over the next five years. Diplomats told CNN they consider it "future-proofing" in the event Trump wins the 2024 election and reneges on US support for NATO and Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jans Stoltenberg recently addressed the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank — which is the principal organization behind the authoritarian Project 2025 initiative — in an effort to deepen his relationship with Trumpworld.

"The demand signal has been through the roof. People are grazing the entire Republican space, trying to talk to everybody to figure out what is going on," Heritage vice president James Carafano said.

An unnamed source who is reportedly "familiar with Trump's thinking" told CNN that should the former president retake the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions would be to arrange a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to facilitate discussion on how to end the war. The source specifically said Trump would use US military aid to Ukraine as leverage to bring both leaders to the table.

“If Ukraine wants continued aid they gotta to sit down and negotiate, and if Russia doesn’t want us to give mass amounts of new support to Ukraine then they have to sit down and negotiate,” CNN's source said. “It does not mean giving into Ukraine or giving Putin all that he wants.”

Click here to read CNN's full report.

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