Calling the NATO alliance “the cornerstone of United States national security” and “vital” to preserving American global interests, eight former American ambassadors to NATO and eight former American supreme commanders in Europe have issued a joint letter arguing for continuing Washington’s commitment to the alliance.
The signatories, a bipartisan group who have served under every president from 1997 until last year, said that NATO was “far from being a charity,” but was instead a “force-multiplier” that allowed the United States to project power and influence “in ways that would be impossible — or prohibitively expensive — to achieve on its own.”
The group timed the letter to the opening of the Munich Security Conference, which meets this year in a fraught atmosphere with questions about President Trump’s commitment to European security and the NATO alliance after his demand to take Greenland away from Denmark, a NATO member.
Trump officials have said that the United States remains committed to NATO and to its principle of collective defense, including the preservation of the American nuclear umbrella. They say that European allies must do more to share the burden of conventional deterrence in Europe as the United States faces new challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Mr. Trump takes credit for pushing NATO allies to spend more in their own defense.
But European doubts about U.S. commitment are rife, especially as Mr. Trump seems to favor Russia’s position in negotiations to try to end the war in Ukraine.
One of the former ambassadors who helped organize the letter, Ivo H. Daalder, said that with “President Trump and others raising questions about the value of NATO and the extraordinary contribution our allies have made in Afghanistan and elsewhere, we thought it important to get a clear statement on the record on how vital NATO is to American security.”
The letter is also intended, he said, to underscore for Europeans “the broad, bipartisan support for NATO that still exists in the United States today.”
Senior Republicans also signed the letter, including Kay Bailey Hutchinson, who was NATO ambassador during Mr. Trump’s first term; as well as all the NATO ambassadors who served during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
The former supreme commanders also include those who served under Mr. Trump during his first term.
The signatories emphasize in the letter that, in their view, the alliance serves American interests, as do the American troops deployed in Europe, which provide the basis for American operations “in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.” Further, the signatories say, “the real value of NATO lies in the deployment of non-U.S. resources in support of U.S. security objectives,” which include securing global trade routes.
In general, the signatories argue that abandoning NATO or replacing it would cost the United States much money and influence in the world. NATO, they say, “is a strategic bargain that ensures the United States remains the world’s most powerful and economically secure nation at a fraction of the cost of going it alone.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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