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In part two of our "Trump, Treason, and NATO" series we focus on the work of Sabrina Haake, a political/legal columnist for the Chicago Tribune and a trial attorney with a distinguished record in litigation.
She follows up on the analysis of Harvard University Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe, whose work was featured in part one (add link to part one). Haake's take on issues related to Trump and NATO was republished at Daily Kos. Let's take a look:
Forget Insurrection. Aiding the enemy is treason
By Sabrina Haake
Aleksei Navalny, hero to the free world, has joined the legion of Putin critics who met untimely poisonings, exploding planes and defenestrations from high-floor windows. His tragic death brings into relief a presidential candidate comforting a thug, and suggests Trump enablers have no concept of world history.
In April 1949, the world reeled from unspeakable horrors. An estimated 85 million people perished in WWII: 45 million soldiers smeared across battlefields, 25 million people starved to death and 11 million Jews, gays and other minorities died in Hitler’s maniacal death camps.
Allied forces emerged from the war determined to forge a collective defense for the future. The North Atlantic Treaty established NATO and gave teeth to a free world order governed by the rule of law.
Prized for its armed deterrence, NATO delivered somber recognition that although Hitler was gone, the power-lust, brutality and villainy that drives men like him would forever remain. For NATO signatories still limping from the war, the question wasn’t if Hitler-caliber evil would reappear on the global stage, but when.
Inviting an enemy to attack NATO allies is treason
NATO, sprung from a binding war and peacetime treaty, is more than an aspiration. Under revered and foundational text of the U.S. Constitution, treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate are the supreme law of the land.
For 75 years, America and her European allies have pledged under the treaty that an armed attack against any NATO member would trigger the same military obligations from all NATO members. Under NATO’s article 5, in the event of such an attack, each member state vows to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Last week, in insult to and derogation of this commitment, an ex-president who tried to stay in power by force publicly encouraged Russia, a present enemy, “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies, to punish them for failure to dedicate 2 percent of their GDP to defense spending.
Since he invaded Ukraine in 2022, Putin has threatened America and NATO with the use of nuclear weapons. Any such attack by Russia at Trump’s behest would trigger NATO’s collective military obligations and activate wartime responses with unfathomable consequences.
Putin is a war criminal and murderous KGB agent. As he brandishes his world-annihilating nuclear arsenal, he is wanted before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Trump’s suggestion that Putin attack NATO allies wasn’t just stupid. It put America and her allies in real danger, in aid and comfort to a current enemy. It was treason.
An alarmed world reacts to Trump’s ignorance
Trump’s new-level asininity hit the world stage just as the American intelligence community was learning about Russia's potential nuclear capacity to disable American defense space satellites. Trump’s demonstration of ignorance sent shockwaves around the world:
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General: Trump’s comments “undermine all of our security including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “Any relativization of NATO’s guarantee of assistance is irresponsible and dangerous and is solely in Russia’s interests.”
Charles Michel, president of the European Council: “Reckless statements on #NATO’s security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putin’s interest. They do not bring more security or peace to the world…
Any of these world leaders might have educated Trump, as well as America’s ignorant, that the only time the NATO mutual defense pact has ever been invoked was when European allies came to the aid of the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Our allies went to war for 20 years for us. Receiving NATO benefits for decades then refusing to reciprocate makes us look like an addled bully unfit to lead.
Trump’s weird Putin bromance
Trump, who continues to argue before the United States Supreme Court that he is above the law, admires dictators. Like Putin, Trump has fought NATO’s anti-dictator objectives for years.
In 2020, according to Politico, Trump told the European Commission President that “if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” adding, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.” Two years later, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump praised Putin as “a guy who is very savvy.” He said he considered Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius.”
Trump, who has secured the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has long fawned over Putin. The admiration appears to be mutual. Despite clear evidence that Russia deployed social media bots to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, Trump handed Putin “an unalloyed diplomatic triumph” by rejecting the conclusions of America’s own intelligence community, per The Washington Post.
Since then, Putin’s online troll army has not relented. As Thom Hartmann detailed:
Putin uses his internet troll army to convince the GOP base to demand their politicians abandon Ukraine and NATO … Just a few months ago, the U.S. intelligence community released a report to 100 countries letting them know that Russia is attacking democracies by trying to sow dissent and mistrust among their people, largely through social media and sympathetic influencers. The (report advised that) Russia is pursuing operations to degrade public confidence in the integrity of elections themselves. For Russia, the benefits of these operations are twofold: to sow instability within democratic societies, and to portray democratic elections as dysfunctional and the resulting governments as illegitimate.
In seeking to destroy democratic governments, Trump isn’t the only useful idiot at Putin’s disposal. Pro-Russia media propagandists such as Tucker Carlson are also in the game, and it’s working. After the Senate approved $60 billion in bipartisan aid to Ukraine last week,Trump’s Capitol Hill mouthpiece, Speaker Mike Johnson, promised it would not see a vote in the House, and then recessed the chamber for a two-week vacation.
Using defense spending is a ruse
After Trump tried to sic Putin on America’s allies, MAGA tried to justify the unjustifiable, by stressing that 19 of NATO’s 30 members are spending below the target of 2% of their annual GDP on defense. But this talking point ignores Europe’s nearly $47 billion in financial and budgetary support, humanitarian aid, macro-financial economic aid and emergency assistance to Ukraine to keep its economy afloat as it fights bombs and an outsized army of conscripted Russian convicts.
Several NATO members are already exceeding NATO’s 2% guideline. Poland spends over 3.9% of its annual GDP, more than the United States. Romania, Hungary, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia each spend between 2.3 percent and 2.7 percent. All NATO nations had already begun moving toward spending 2 percent after Putin illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Trump had nothing to do with it.
Trump would start WWIII to serve his own ego
Trump has invited Russia, a current enemy, to attack American allies while urging his congressional supporters to aid Russia by turning their backs on Ukraine.
Trump’s ignorance has put American interests at risk. Simply suggesting that the United States will disavow its military obligations instantly weakens our alliances.
Given Trump’s instability, and the national divide he has worked so hard to cultivate, our longtime European partners may in fact be safer by distancing themselves from the United States, emboldening not only Putin’s Russia, but China, Iran, North Korea and terrorist proxies in the Middle East. The damage is done. Whether it can be contained remains to be seen.
My grandfather, Gus Wirthwein, fought in WWII. One of the lucky ones, he got to come home with both legs to his farm in Huntingburg, Indiana. At day’s end he liked to drink beer (Pabst) in front of a campfire and carve walnuts. He’d talk about the crops, the neighbor’s foal, the weather — near anything, except he would never talk about what happened to him during the war.
I only pray that wherever he is, he doesn’t know what Trump has done, and will do to NATO and the free world if given another chance.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing on 1st and 14th amendment defense. Her Substack is free.
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