TOI Correspondent from Washington: Prominent allies of President Trump including Elon Musk are endorsing calls for the United States to quit Nato, and even institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank and IMF, amid a tectonic shift in the global power architecture.
While Trump himself has been skeptical, even disdainful of Nato, last week’s Oval Office spat with Ukraine’s leader Voldymry Zelensky has amplified calls from a MAGA base infused with “America First” fervor to jettison alliances and institutions they maintain do not serve US interests.
Musk, the influential head of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) tasked with cutting wasteful US expenditure and culling non-productive government personnel, took to X to endorse a suggestion by a prominent pro-Trump social media influential Gunther Eagleman, who wrote: “It’s time to leave Nato and the United Nations (UN).”
Trump further added to the suspense on Monday with a cryptic message on his social media platform, saying, “TOMORROW NIGHT WILL BE BIG. I WILL TELL IT LIKE IT IS!” The US President is scheduled to deliver an address to the joint session of congress on Tuesday night to a plaint legislature where his party has a majority in both chambers and Democrats are in disarray.
While US lawmakers have previously expressed bipartisan support for Nato and the UN, Republican Senator Mike Lee from Utah, is among the first to break ranks, calling for reconsidering US commitments. He has described NATO as a “Cold War relic” and argued that it disproportionately benefits Europe while offering little direct security benefit to the U.S.
On the House side, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hardline MAGA lawmaker and Trump loyalist is among those calling for US withdrawal from Nato.
Prominent Trump supporters are now talking of a generational divide on the topic of how to deal with Russia going by the US President’s transparent embrace of Moscow at the expense of Nato allies. Trump has previously threatened to throw Nato under the Russian bus if the other members failed to increase their defense spending, once warning “In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
Echoing the MAGA sentiment of “pull out before they (European nations) pull us into a nuclear war,” conservative commentator Candace Owens is among those supporting Trump’s view that the US pathology against Russia is unwarranted and the real problem is Nato and its warmongering supporters in Washington.
“People who grew up with the memory of the Cold War and a real fear of nuclear war are easily persuaded by the mainstream media’s insistence that Russia is the world’s enemy and too many of them seem unwilling to consider our new reality: Ukraine, money-laundering, and Nato are entirely problematic,” says Owens, reflecting a remarkable development in US public opinion. It is not clear if the MAGA base is taking the cue from Trump’s view or if Trump is hewing to MAGA sentiment.
MAGA commentators are now toting up US support to Ukraine’s war effort ($ 350 billion according to Trump; $ 120 billion by other accounts), and its contributions to Nato, to the UN (about $12 billion annually, approximately 25 percent of its budget), and to the World Bank (about $1.5 billion annually; $ 90 billion since its inception), to argue that the US should stop being the world’s “piggy bank” when the country is $ 35 trillion in debt.
