> It is abundantly clear the USA is no longer a dependable ally
An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
What has changed is the US has become more realistic and up front about the limitations of its reduced military. It’s not healthy, for the US /or/ Europe, to indulge the imperial fantasy that US forces in Europe (token deployments in Germany and Poland) are sufficient to defend against Russian attack.
Trump is not the first US president to push Europe to do more of precisely what it is doing here (spend its own money on defense). Being clear about limits is what a reliable ally does.
Europe ordering an Airbus AWACS instead of Boeing now that the US stopped subsidizing them is not surprising nor does it mean the sky is falling.
>An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
Before making chest-thumping proclamations of this sort perhaps you'd best read the text of article 5:
-- If a member is attacked, other members will take "such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area".
See the part where it says "such action it deems necessary"? Trump may decide that the necessary action is to go play golf. He's gone back and forth on his commitment to European defense a number of times over the years, so there's really no reason to believe that his he won't change his mind on it before breakfast tomorrow.
The unspoken truth here is that there are inner and outer members of the NATO core. Estonia, I’m sorry to say, is not a country the United States would go to WWIII over. The core members of Germany, France, Poland, Italy, and possibly the Uk remain. Followed by a few others, and then there’s the rest where if Russia invaded journalists across the eastern seaboard would furiously rush to Chat GPT to find out where it is on the map.
All that aside, and regardless of your views on this administration’s posture toward NATO, Europe needs to revitalize its defense industry as there’s been a much remarked on free rider problem for a while. Robert Gates made a now infamous speech about this problem on his way out of office as secretary of defense.
> A treaty is only as good as its enforcement, and if the USA declines to uphold their obligations, who is going to force them?
A mutual defense treaty is no good at all if it needs enforcement; it only works as a coordinating tool between basically-willing parties. When it becomes anything else, well, look at CSTO.
"An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed"
What changed is the US President saying things like, he will encourage Putin to invade countries not spending so much on military.
What also changed is the US President threatening members of the EU militarily over greenland for example.
Reliable allies don't really do that.
(you probably do not realize the shock Denmark felt over this, that went deep and the change will not happen over night, but it will happen)
There's also no guarantees that the current president or administration would honor those NATO obligations if Article 5 is called.
The president has repeatedly been vocal about the US leaving NATO as a possibility.
If I were the EU, I certainly wouldn't be counting on the US honoring any of its agreements and I'd be planning with the assumption that they will not join a NATO response.
However, I think that many in the US are underestimating the current paradigm shift. Right now, in Europe, leaders and voters need to take decisions while keeping in mind the possibility that the US will invade Canada and Greenland while not reacting if Russia movies to Estonia.
Will it happen? Who the f*k knows? Donald Trump has made declarations very much in this direction. Also, Donald Trump has broken a sufficiently large number of treaties since becoming president that _anything_ should be considered possible.
That being said, as you mention, it's not clear that any of this is in any way related to Europe not buying the E-7.
These are more incorrect emotional claims. Withdrawing from an agreement (all three of your examples) is not the same as reneging or “breaking” the agreement. The US has not withdrawn from NATO; meanwhile, it has proactively withdrawn from agreements it does not wish to be in any longer. That actually bolsters the case that nothing has changed w/r/t article 5.
Obama famously avoided sending either to Congress as he is legally required for the USA to ratify a treaty. The USA's "commitment" was non binding and frankly illegal for Obama to make. Hell the USA Congress even send a letter to Iran to be super explicit that the accords didn't mean shit since it's not ratified by the USA.
Please provide a verifiable reference to the specific international law or laws that says that a US president's signature is sufficient to create a binding treaty.
The US Constitution, specifically Article II, section 2, says "[The president] shall have the power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided that two-thirds of the Senators present concur". That's pretty clear that the President's signature alone is not enough.
Article 7 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, specifically
> 1. A person is considered as representing a State for the purpose of adopting or authenticating the text of a treaty or for the purpose of expressing the consent of the State to be bound by a treaty if:
[...]
> (b) it appears from the practice of the States concerned or from other circumstances that their intention was to consider that person as representing the State for such purposes and to dispense with full powers.
> 2. In virtue of their functions and without having to produce full powers, the following are considered as representing their State:
>(a) Heads of State, [...], for the purpose of performing all acts relating to the conclusion of a treaty;
[...]
Again, your constitution is your business. We do not care about it and it is not pertinent to our dealings with you. Get your house in order.
False. Treaty ratification is a recognized feature of international law. For instance, the USMCA was signed by all three parties in 2018 but didn’t enter effect until 2020, when the last of the parties—Canada—ratified the treaty.
Ratification is irrelevant in this case. Obama, acting as head of state, deposited instruments of acceptance for the US. Once that happened, your internal processes stopped being relevant to the international community.
At that point, the US was estopped from changing course. Doing so broke the bona fide principle.
> In international law, they were treaties. Your internal squabbles do not concern us and just make you look unreliable.
What a joke everyone knew we didn't ratify them everyone just wanted to pretend. We even send a letter to Iran making sure they knew. The EU especially was funny acting like the agreement had any value when the USA wasn't part of it.
Unless I'm mistaken, by imposing tariffs, Donald Trump has broken pretty much all trade treaties ever signed by the US.
Since these treaties covered more than tariffs (e.g. some of them were the same treaties that ensured recognition of copyrights across borders), I'm not sure of the whole scope of these events.
An extreme and inaccurate statement. The US is still party to NATO Article 5, meaning the blood of our young people is pledged to be shed to defend, say, Estonia. That has not changed.
What has changed is the US has become more realistic and up front about the limitations of its reduced military. It’s not healthy, for the US /or/ Europe, to indulge the imperial fantasy that US forces in Europe (token deployments in Germany and Poland) are sufficient to defend against Russian attack.
Trump is not the first US president to push Europe to do more of precisely what it is doing here (spend its own money on defense). Being clear about limits is what a reliable ally does.
Europe ordering an Airbus AWACS instead of Boeing now that the US stopped subsidizing them is not surprising nor does it mean the sky is falling.