John Ivison: An untrustworthy Trump administration sounds worried its allies don’t trust it anymore

U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby has dismissed the collective “middle power strategy” that the Europeans and Canada have been pursuing. Photo by John Thys/AFP via Getty Images

Article content

For many years, Elbridge Colby has been one of the loudest voices in Washington calling for America’s NATO allies to pay their “fair share” on defence, in order to allow the United States to pivot toward the growing challenge of China.

Article content

It was something of a surprise, then, to see Colby, President Donald Trump’s “Under Secretary of War,” attacking those same allies on social media Tuesday for doing exactly what he has asked them to do for so long.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Colby penned a lengthy thread on X dumping on the collective “middle power strategy” that the Europeans and Canada have been pursuing, while at the same time dismissing it as not a “serious possibility.”

Article content

Article content

“Rather, we are more concerned that a few allies and partners will think it is and waste valuable time, money and political capital on a distraction,” he wrote.

Article content

“We (the U.S.) are flexible realists,” he said (on a day the president reposted online the image of a map of Canada, Greenland and Venezuela overlaid by the Stars and Stripes).

Article content

The crux of the critique was the impact of the middle power strategy on America’s defence industry and arms sales. Colby said suggestions the U.S. would lose market share for its weaponry was “neither feasible nor accurate” since the U.S. makes the best equipment at a scale that no plausible competitor can match.

Article content

He said the White House welcomes allies’ investment in their own defence industries, “but in ways that are collaborative with America’s, rather than trying in vain to replicate it or supplant it.”

Article content

For someone who says he is not bothered that his NATO allies are pursuing a more autonomous path, he sounded remarkably anxious.

Article content

Article content

European NATO members have sourced around half their military equipment from the U.S. in recent years.

Article content

Article content

Clearly, that percentage is going to drop — and by the sounds of Colby’s transparent dissimulation, by quite a lot.

Article content

“(I)f you feel you need to point all this out publicly, this suggests that you are correctly beginning to understand that many of your allies have lost trust in U.S. reliability,” replied Wolfgang Ischinger, chair of the Munich Security Conference and a former German ambassador in the U.S., to Colby’s post on X.

Article content

Washington’s belated realization that the breach in relations President Trump has instituted will have economic consequences was first expressed by the U.S. deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, at a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting last December, when he warned partners against “bullying” U.S. firms out of European arms bids. Presumably, he did not appreciate the irony of the Trump administration levelling accusations of protectionism.

Article content

Yet, as any flexible realist would know, you cannot elevate military spending to the levels Colby is advocating without persuading voters that it is economically, as well as militarily, in the national interest.