Europe’s moral abdication in the fight against the Islamist terror regime is proving a surprising truth. Right now, Washington and Jerusalem both have only one reliable ally: each other.
It is axiomatic that Israel’s greatest diplomatic challenge rests on a single unavoidable truth. The Jewish state has only one real ally on which it can depend right now: the United States. Yet at the start of the sixth week of war against Iran, it’s becoming clear that the same may be true for Washington. It has formal alliances with many nations—notably, the 31 other members of NATO. But when push comes to shove, it turns out that the only truly reliable ally of the United States is the country with which it has no formal alliance: Israel.
Predictably, critics of President Donald Trump are blaming this state of affairs on him and his confrontational attitude toward NATO allies, particularly Western European nations like the United Kingdom, France and Spain.
They argue that he has launched an unnecessary and costly “war of choice” that the Europeans are wise to stay out of. Moreover, they also say that the diffidence, if not outright opposition, of NATO members to joining in the Iran war is due to Trump’s belligerent approach to them. He has badgered them to contribute more than token amounts to their own defense, which has been largely funded by the generosity of American taxpayers for the last 80 years, and threatened serious consequences if they refuse. Worse than that, his demands that Denmark, for instance, allow the United States to take over Greenland is considered nothing less than a threat that they say is analogous to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
NATO is the problem, not Trump
Still, the notion that it is Trump’s behavior or “America First” beliefs that are sinking NATO is to mistake a reaction to a dilemma for the problem itself.
