Ready to move on without the U.S.

For the past several months, reporters and pundits around the world have devoted much attention to whether the United States will withdraw from NATO, and what the ramifications of such a decision would be on world peace and the remaining NATO members.

Given Canada’s proximity to the U.S. and its complex relationship with that nation through the CUSMA trade agreement, NORAD and many other agreements and treaties, the question of how we would be impacted by the departure of the U.S. from NATO has been the subject of much speculation in Canada’s media and anxiety among many Canadians.

All of that discussion is warranted, but it ignores another compelling issue: Whether Canada and other non-U.S. NATO members should be considering leaving the organization to form a “new NATO” without the U.S., and what the consequences of doing so would be.

It’s far from a hypothetical question. On Thursday, the Spark Insights polling organization released the results of a poll it conducted earlier this week. It found that a resounding 76 per cent of respondents believe that “Under Trump’s leadership, the U.S. is an unreliable and damaging partner to the NATO alliance and the remaining countries should move on without the U.S. in the future.” Just 24 per cent believe that “other NATO countries should accept Trump’s demands of them in order to ensure America stays in NATO.”

Those numbers correspond somewhat to a poll conducted in March for Politico of six major EU nations — Poland, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy. That poll found that 12 per cent of respondents see America as a close ally, but 36 per cent regard it as a threat. In comparison, just 29 per cent of respondents view China as a threat.

Eighty-six per cent of respondents agree that Europe must develop its own defence capabilities, while 69 per cent support the creation of a common European military force operating alongside national armies. Seventy-six per cent of respondents said they would support sending their country’s military to defend a NATO ally if attacked, while support rose to 81 per cent if a fellow EU member was attacked.

Canadians and Europeans can hardly be blamed for feeling the way they do about their ally. After all, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to invade Greenland and make Canada the 51st state, and he continues to denigrate NATO nations as freeloaders who refuse to carry their weight and fail to appreciate the protection the U.S. provides for them. He makes no secret of his desire to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and, as the Insight and Politico polls reveal, a large percentage of citizens of major NATO nations have become comfortable with that possibility.

In fact, the events of this week could transform the possibility into a necessity. On the first day of the Iranian conflict, American planes bombed a school, killing more than 200 students. Over the following weeks, U.S. and Israeli aircraft then destroyed or damaged numerous other facilities throughout Iran, including critical infrastructure, reportedly killing thousands of civilians. This past Tuesday, Trump threatened on social media that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

Many legal experts say that all of those bombings and all of Trump’s threats, including his threat to wipe out “an entire civilization,” may constitute war crimes. Even the mere possibility that such crimes have been committed (something only a court can decide) poses a serious conundrum for all non-U.S. NATO members.

How can we be allies of a nation whose commander-in-chief has repeatedly threatened civilian infrastructure, and has even threatened a massive act of genocide? How can our nations’ armed forces serve alongside a nation whose leader said earlier this week that he is “not at all” concerned about committing war crimes in Iran?

He may not be concerned, but U.S. NATO allies should be. That is because, when a nation commits a war crime, silence by that nation’s allies can be regarded as complicity in that crime. In an opinion piece published by Independent Australia earlier this week, professor Vince Hooper wrote that “an ally who cannot be told ‘no’ on a publicly threatened war crime is not an ally; it is a liability underwritten by our own statute books.”

That’s something for Canada and our non-U.S. NATO allies to seriously reflect upon. Can we, from a moral and/or legal standpoint, continue to be allies with a nation that threatens to commit war crimes and, in the opinion of many, has already done so? What does that same about them? What would ignoring the elephant in the room say about us?

On this issue, Canadians and Europeans may be ahead of their leaders. They are horrified by what Trump is saying and doing, and they don’t want any part of it. They’ve had enough and are willing to move on without this version of the U.S.