Donald Trump has launched a ferocious attack on his NATO allies just hours after America seized a Russian oil tanker in European waters and as the US threatens to invade Greenland.
The President ripped into ‘fans’ of the post-WWII military alliance with a reminder that ‘most weren’t paying their bills’ – just 2 percent of their GDP on defense, well short of the 5 percent target set last summer at the Hague.
‘Until I came along,’ Trump wrote on Wednesday morning. ‘The USA was, foolishly, paying for them.’
‘Russia and China have zero fear of NATO without the United States, and I doubt NATO would be there for us if we really needed them,’ he added.
‘We will always be there for NATO, even if they won’t be there for us. The only nation that China and Russia fear and respect is the DJT-rebuilt USA.’
The broadside comes as the US, in another show of its military superiority, seized a Russian oil tanker off the north coast of Scotland. Moscow had recently dispatched a submarine to escort the vessel, which was smuggling sanctioned oil from Venezuela.
Europe is on edge after Trump threatened to seize Greenland, a Danish territory, after his capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in the early hours of Saturday.
Britain, France and Italy released a statement backing Denmark on Monday after the White House announced the President was exploring plans to take control of Greenland, including buying the land or taking control of its defense.
The US seized the Russian-flagged oil tanker Bella 1 in the North Atlantic waters between Iceland and Scotland on Wednesday.
Dramatic footage showed US special forces storming the ship after pursuing it for weeks in an operation inflaming tensions with Moscow.
The Coast Guard also captured a second tanker, the Sophia, in the Caribbean this morning as America strangles the flow of oil from Venezuela to adversaries including Russia, China and Iran.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth put the world on notice by saying that the blockade of Venezuelan oil is in full effect, and said no ship is safe anywhere in the world.
‘The United States continues to enforce the blockade against all dark fleet vessels illegally transporting Venezuelan oil to finance illicit activity, stealing from the Venezuelan people,’ he wrote on X.
‘Only legitimate and lawful energy commerce – as determined by the US – will be permitted.’
Russia’s Transport Ministry responded: ‘No state has the right to use force against vessels properly registered in other countries’ jurisdictions.’
Trump has in the last week thrown decades of precedent out of the window in his treatment of NATO allies and Congress.
The President consulted neither parties before launching his audacious snatch-and-grab raid of Maduro on Saturday, and now chills relations further by threatening to invade Greenland – a neighbor which the US has vowed to protect since 1951.
Trump, emboldened by Maduro’s capture, touted the ‘Donroe Doctrine’, his version of the Monroe Doctrine, the 1800s-era policy warning against European colonization in the Americas articulated by President James Monroe.
‘They now call it the Donroe Doctrine … American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again,’ he told reporters.
The shift has been formalized by the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, a cornerstone of the National Security Strategy published last month.
The corollary – meaning a proposition that follows from one that is already proved – establishes three non-negotiable pillars: denial of strategic assets, expanded hemispheric boundaries and militarized law enforcement.
Seizing the Russian-flagged tanker in international waters shows that the US now effectively treats the Atlantic and Caribbean as ‘American lakes,’ where it claims the right to board any vessel it believes is a threat.
For Russia and China, this is ‘keep out’ sign.
For Europe, Trump is showing that he is ‘daddy’, as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prophetically joked last summer.
The administration views the presence of China, Russia and Iran in Latin America as a modern violation of the Monroe Doctrine.
China has created foreign companies to build infrastructure in the region as part of its global Belt and Road strategy to make nations reliant on its services and turn them into debtors.
European allies are scrambling to respond.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said this week that if the US seizes Greenland, the NATO alliance would collapse.
‘The international community as we know it, democratic rules of the game, NATO, the world’s strongest defensive alliance – all of that would collapse if one NATO country chose to attack another,’ she said.
