OP-ED Trump's nuclear comments may be a trap for Obama - Nikkei Asian Review

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Eco...mp-s-nuclear-comments-may-be-a-trap-for-Obama

April 8, 2016 8:10 pm JST

Trump's nuclear comments may be a trap for Obama

NAOYA YOSHINO, Nikkei staff writer

WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump, the front-runner in the U.S. Republican presidential primaries, has suggested that the U.S. withdraw its forces from Japan, and that Japan and South Korea obtain nuclear capability.

These suggestions not only threaten security alliances -- Japan and South Korea are now under the American nuclear umbrella -- they also pose a challenge to global security and economic policies.

Trump's timing seems to have been carefully calibrated.

His remarks came right before the final Nuclear Security Summit, in Washington, in late March, and allowed the New York tycoon to steal a march on U.S. President Barack Obama, the host of the summit. Obama has long talked of his desire for "a world without nuclear weapons," but Trump's words loomed over the summit, attended by leaders of over 50 countries, and drew global attention.

In an interview with The New York Times, Trump unveiled what he dubbed his "America First" foreign policy. "If the U.S. keeps on its path, its current path of weakness," he said, "they're going to want to have [nuclear arsenals] anyway." Were Japan to acquire a nuclear weapon in the face of the North Korean threat, Trump said, he is "not sure that would be a bad thing for [the U.S.]."

With nuclear capability, Japan and South Korea would effectively be able to defend themselves. This would be a fundamental change in both countries' security policies, which have long relied on the nations' respective alliances with the U.S.

Each country would increase its defense spending. This would put their public finances and domestic economies in jeopardy. The global economy would also be impacted. North Korea would have cause to continue developing a nuclear weapon. The likeliness of an Asian arms race would spike.

One way Trump draws support is by criticizing American politicians, so consider his spoiling of Obama's summit a tactic. For Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his call for "a world without nuclear weapons," nuclear disarmament is a top priority. By suggesting the exact opposite when he did, Trump was able to savor a mouthful of schadenfreude.

Inflaming emotions

"If we get attacked, Japan doesn't have to do anything," Trump said after he launched his campaign in June. In fact, he has repeatedly criticized the present Japan-U.S. security alliance, describing it as an "unfair" deal.

Trump loves to play the "unfair" card. "We are not reimbursed for our protection of many of the countries ... including Saudi Arabia," he told The Times. And "we pay a disproportionate share" of NATO costs.

The notion of this "unfairness" is particularly resonant with many Americans, so many of whom feel powerless in a society that is meant to be impartial.

Trump is said to have used this idea in business negotiations, and there are those who say it is what his success is built upon.

No wonder, then, that his campaign strategy banks on kindling a kind of victimhood in the Republican electorate.

In 1989, Japan's Mitsubishi Estate decided to buy Rockefeller Center, in New York, triggering a wave of Japan bashing. Trump, a New Yorker, got a firsthand look at these raw emotions.

Now he seems to be trying to inflame them, like when he says the weak yen is making Komatsu, a major Japanese construction machinery maker, unfairly competitive in the U.S.

Time to do something else

But this hearkening back to the 1980s, this painting of the U.S. as a victim of Japan, is outdated.

Still, Trump is telling inward-looking Americans exactly what they want to hear. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still cast long shadows over the country, and inequality is growing. This has many Americans simply wanting better lives for themselves -- and not striving for the ideal of a stable world.

So when Trump argues for Japan and South Korea to arm themselves rather than rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella, his appeal grows. "America First!"

Rumors suggest that Trump's nuclear arms remarks were also intended as a set-up. The theory is that if Obama decides to visit Hiroshima in May while in Japan for the Group of Seven summit, Trump would accuse him of engaging in "apologetic" diplomacy.

A poll shows that nearly 60% of Americans think the dropping of the bomb was justified. If Trump were to use this accusation, the theory goes, he would all but guarantee himself the votes of war veterans. He would also be dealing a blow to Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the Democratic primaries and Obama's first secretary of state.

"[Trump] doesn't know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world generally," Obama said on April 1 at a press conference after the nuclear summit.

Although support for Trump is waning, he remains a strong candidate. Perhaps it is time for other politicians to start doing something other than talking down to him, like Obama did.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion...an-commentary/u-s-fold-nuclear-umbrella-asia/

Commentary / Japan

Should U.S. fold its nuclear umbrella in Asia?

by Doug Bandow
Apr 8, 2016

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump again is causing international consternation. His remarks about South Korea and Japan developing nuclear weapons set off a minor firestorm.

“It would be catastrophic were the United States to shift its position and indicate that we support somehow the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional countries,” argued deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

Actually, what would be catastrophic is American involvement in a nuclear war as a result of its defense commitment to another nation, especially one able to defend itself.

Indeed, Rhodes praised the fact that “Japan and the Republic of Korea benefit from our very rock-solid security assurances that we will come to their defense in any event.” But this has turned prosperous, populous countries into permanent defense dependents.

Trump addressed this dependency. Neither country pays enough for its own protection, instead preferring to rely on Washington. He suggested that one answer would be for them to go nuclear. The issue “at some point is something that we have to talk about,” he explained.

That’s hardly a radical sentiment. The issue recently was raised by a former presidential candidate in South Korea. After Trump’s remarks, Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute observed: “If we have nuclear weapons, we’ll be in a much better position to deal with North Korea.”

Over the years there has been talk in Japan about pursuing the nuclear option. Former Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto said Trump’s sentiments allowed “Japan to change the peace-addled notion that America will protect us.”

Despite the campaign to treat nuclear nonproliferation as sacrosanct, it cannot be decided in isolation. Broadly speaking, it is better if fewer nations have nukes. Yet in some cases proliferation might be stabilizing. Had Ukraine not given up its nuclear weapons left over from the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia might not have grabbed Crimea and supported separatists elsewhere.

Worse, the way Washington won assent of some nuclear-capable powers to abstain is to provide a “nuclear umbrella,” that is, promise to use nukes to defend them if necessary. As a result, the price of nonproliferation in East Asia is America’s willingness to risk Los Angeles to protect Seoul and Tokyo, and maybe Taipei and Canberra too.

Today nonproliferation means only the bad guys get guns. In East Asia, China, Russia and North Korea are the nuclear powers. America is supposed to provide geopolitical balance.

The result of this situation truly could be catastrophic.

The question today is what approach is likely to most promote stability in Northeast Asia and least risk to U.S. security. So far, America’s defense promises have not caused the dragon or bear to lie down with the lamb.

China is acting aggressively toward Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam in particular; Russia has challenged the U.S. in the eastern reaches of Europe and the Middle East. North Korea is worse, constantly breathing fire against its neighbors and the U.S.

Still, policymakers act as if U.S. defense guarantees will never get called. The threat of nuclear retaliation undoubtedly has deterrent value. However, the two great wars of the 20th century started because deterrence failed.

In particular, threats that seem inconsistent with underlying interests have little credibility. Thus, the Chinese have publicly doubted that America would risk nuclear war over Taiwan’s independence.

Moreover, once given, it is hard to back away from “rock solid security assurances” that have lost their original purpose. Which means if deterrence fails America could be at war automatically without considering the stakes.

Finally, promising to defend other, smaller powers allows them to hold American security hostage. With Washington behind them they are more likely to engage in risky behavior. During the 2000s, Taiwan’s independence-minded President Chen Shui-bian upset Chinese sensibilities.

Japan has refused to even discuss the status of the Senkaku Islands with China. Washington’s view that they are covered by the “mutual” defense treaty likely has encouraged Tokyo’s tough stance. Philippines has a military which might not be even second rate, yet that government is attempting to enlist the U.S. in its squabble with Beijing over Scarborough Reef.

America’s nuclear umbrella is something that should be debated in both the U.S. and Asia. Yet Rhodes dismissed even discussing the idea, contending that “for the past 70 years” the U.S. has opposed nuclear proliferation. But when the world changes, policy also should change.

Trump was right when he argued that “at some point, (the U.S.) cannot be the policeman of the world.” America’s nuclear umbrella deserves scrutiny.

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He frequently writes about military non-interventionism and is the author of “Foreign Follies: America’s New Global Empire.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.mpnnow.com/news/20160408/we-should-threaten-nuclear-proliferation

We should threaten nuclear proliferation

By Matt Schaertl
Posted Apr. 8, 2016 at 2:01 AM
Canandaigua, N.Y.

Supposedly, every president since the invention of nuclear weapons has actively been against nuclear proliferation. The Donald Trump statement, where he suggested Japan should consider arming itself with its own nuclear weapons for its own protection against North Korea, turned that political assumption on its ear.

Why would you ever reverse a position that was established generations ago? Simple — it’s not the same world anymore, and it hasn’t been for a long time. It is now more evident that one weak president or one aggressive former KGB leader can make the world more dangerous than two royal families.

I would be willing to bet that the fight against proliferation did not occur until after the U.S. held the nuclear advantage and that there was a possible future threat of the U.S. losing that advantage.

Iran does not need to invent nuclear weapons in Iran. It can simply set up shop in North Korea and export the product back to Iran or, as the Soviets did in Cuba, establish a launching position in North Korea in exchange for the badly needed dollars that Iran will be generating from oil revenues. Heck, Iran and North Korea could jointly develop naval-based systems that never touch the shores of any country. By the way, in case you do not know, India started deep-port construction in Iran against the wishes of the U.S. last year, prior to the sanctions being lifted (but to be fair to India, Iran also inked trade deals with Italy, France, Turkey, China, Russia, Iraq, Pakistan, England, Norway, Austria and Spain last year).

You cannot stop it. It is like gun ownership in the U.S. North Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel have all obtained nuclear status without the world's blessing. From a non-biased factual point of view, what has happened to those countries since then: No armies have invaded North Korea, nor have they invaded anyone either (they did sucker the U.S. into giving them aid for the promise of not pursuing). Pakistan and India have not restarted their war since they both became nuclear. Israel, a country that has had seven armies attempt to invade it, has had zero armies attack it since it went nuclear. Good or bad, once a country has nuclear weapons, it does not get invaded. Why would we not encourage our allies to have nukes?

Would Ukraine, a country whose 90 percent of the electorate voted in the 1990s for independence from Russia, had been invaded and annexed by Russia if it had kept its nuclear weapons? We shouldn’t be against proliferation — we should threaten proliferation. Right now, the U.S. should tell Iran that, in the event it does obtain nuclear weapons, the U.S. will respond by providing nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Crazy idea in some ways, but what if, instead of Jimmy Carter heading to Korea with bags of cash back (twice) in the 1990s to bribe it, we sent General Dynamics with an empty bag and said, you want nuclear weapons? No problem, fill the bag, and we will give you what you can afford. What would its response be? If the U.S. isn’t afraid of us having nukes, maybe it’s not worth the investment? Maybe the ol' man's generals are feeding me a line of bull to stay in power? It is certainly more preferable to have sold the nukes and know exactly where they are and what they can do than to be bamboozled and not know where they are and not know what they can do.

Matt Schaertl of Shortsville is a frequent contributor to the Daily Messenger.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://fpif.org/south-korea-get-bomb/

Should South Korea Get the Bomb?

Donald Trump and a majority of South Koreans believe that South Korea should have a nuclear weapon. Are they right?

By John Feffer, April 7, 2016. Originally published in Hankyoreh.

In 2012, a year before he died, the distinguished political scientist Kenneth Waltz wrote an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that everyone should stop worrying about Iran getting a nuclear weapon. He didn’t think that Iran was likely to voluntarily abandon its efforts to acquire a nuke. Nor did he think that the country would be satisfied with a “break-out” capability – staying just outside the nuclear club by having sufficient material and expertise to build and test a weapon within a short space of time.

Instead, Waltz thought it inevitable that Iran, like North Korea, would eventually go nuclear. Counter-intuitively, he believed that this “would probably be the best possible result: the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.”

This variety of “nuclear realism” has been around for some time. Indeed, Waltz peddled this particular theory since at least the early 1980s. The conventional wisdom, embodied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, holds that the fewer members of the nuclear club the better, for non-proliferation reduces the likelihood of nuclear war and restricts the amount of nuclear material available to malefactors. Waltz, however, long believed that the system of deterrence is only made stronger when many states possess nuclear weapons because they become more cautious as a result and less willing to escalate in a conflict situation.

Waltz’s remains a minority position. Barack Obama, for instance, became the first American president in 2009 to champion the ultimate elimination of nuclear weapons. Although he hasn’t made much headway toward achieving this goal, he did set up a mechanism to advance disarmament and non-proliferation. The fourth such nuclear security summit took place in Washington, DC last week with representatives from 56 countries and organizations. There was much self-congratulatory rhetoric at the U.S.-sponsored meeting about the strength of the non-proliferation regime, particularly after last year’s nuclear deal with Iran. Waltz, it turned out, was spectacularly wrong. In exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions, Tehran was indeed willing to stop pursuing a nuclear capacity (in large part because it had stepped off that path several years earlier).

Participants were less optimistic about North Korea. The country conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and also announced that it had successfully constructed a nuclear warhead for its long-range missile. Although it remains unclear exactly how significant North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is – and whether it has in fact a missile-ready device – Pyongyang has managed to cast a long shadow over what Washington had hoped would be a more celebratory occasion.

The conversation about nuclear weapons in East Asia has also taken a turn in a Waltzian direction. Some voices both inside South Korea and outside are tired of preaching non-proliferation at North Korea and getting no answer. So, like Waltz, they are making the case that the more nuclear weapons in East Asia the merrier.

The latest person to join the fray is Donald Trump, who recently suggested that Japan and South Korea perhaps should acquire nuclear weapons – to help reduce their dependency on the United States as well as the corresponding costs to American taxpayers. It’s not exactly a well-though-out position (Trump’s positions never are). But at least Trump is challenging the longstanding liberal-conservative consensus that the United States should maintain a vast overseas military presence.

South Koreans are not averse to considering a homegrown nuclear capability. A February 2013 poll by the Asan Institute suggested that two-thirds of South Koreans want their country to acquire such weapons. A Joongang Ilbo poll this last February produced nearly identical results.

Although the top leadership in the country, including President Park Geun-Hye, rejects such a strategy, other influential voices are broaching what had once been a entirely taboo subject. The conservative newspaper Chosun Ilbo, for instance, argues that South Korea has to acquire nuclear weapons in order to level the playing field. “Even if the South bolsters its missile defenses with the aid of the U.S., such defense systems will only offer us brief psychological solace while the country remains in the crosshairs of the North’s weapons of mass destruction,” it argued in a January 2016 editorial. “Using conventional weapons to counter such a threat is ludicrous.” Unlike Trump, however, Chosun Ilbo would not advocate for weakening the U.S.-South Korean alliance.

For others in South Korea, the nuclear option is just to scare China into putting more pressure on North Korea. “I don’t think that South Korea actually wants nuclear weapons,” said Park Syung-je of the Asia Strategy Institute in Seoul told The Washington Post. “It’s a way of saying to the Chinese that ‘if you don’t cooperate on North Korea, then we’re going to get nuclear weapons of our own.’ ”

Neither of these arguments for acquiring a nuclear weapon is particularly convincing. South Korea has an overwhelming conventional military advantage over North Korea, plus America’s nuclear arsenal provides irrefutable deterrence. North Korea has invested so much in its own extremely modest nuclear capability precisely in order to achieve some modicum of parity with the South.

As for a South Korean nuclear program pushing China toward acting more aggressively against North Korea, that isn’t likely to work either. Pyongyang simply doesn’t listen to Beijing. And although it’s willing to support some economic sanctions, China isn’t willing to precipitate regime change in its neighbor because of the substantial risks involved to security, the regional economy, and the potential flow of migrants.

The more likely country to respond immediately if South Korea were to push forward on developing a nuclear weapon would be Japan. For some time, Tokyo has maintained a break-out capacity: it has plenty of stockpiled plutonium and enriched uranium and it could probably have an arsenal up and running in two years or less. It’s also not clear whether an Asian expansion of the nuclear club could stop at Japan and South Korea.

It’s not that I expect countries in the region to deliberately launch a nuclear war against each other. But there’s always the risk of miscalculation. And the more nuclear weapons there are, the more potential accidents could happen. Already during the Cold War, the world narrowly escaped nuclear annihilation on several occasions.

The world again avoided calamity last year when it negotiated a nuclear agreement with Iran. Both the United States and Israel were considering military attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And if Iran had entered the nuclear club, imagine how destabilizing it would have been if Saudi Arabia decided to follow suit, not to mention the Assad regime in Syria.

It’s entirely understandable that South Koreans feel vulnerable living so near a nuclear North Korea. But acquiring one’s own arsenal doesn’t eliminate those feelings of vulnerability – any more than it did for the United States during the Cold War. The real solution is to subtract nuclear weapons from the equation, not add more of them.


John Feffer is the director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://fpif.org/trumps-remarks-reveal-fears-u-s-troops-harms-way-north-korea/

Trump’s Remarks Reveal Fears About U.S. Troops in Harm’s Way From North Korea

Donald Trump's calls for arming Seoul and Tokyo with nuclear weapons seems to be his way of keeping American troops out of the line of nuclear fire.

By Keith K C Hui, April 7, 2016.


All U.S. troops — 54,000 in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea — will be withdrawn by the time the Pentagon has been certain North Korea is in possession of nuclear warheads. It is the message implicitly conveyed by Donald Trump when saying repeatedly since late March that Japan and South Korea should have nuclear armament.

Although what Trump mainly referred to explicitly was about money — “to withdraw U.S. forces from both Japan and South Korea if they did not substantially increase their contributions to the costs of housing and feeding those troops” [Note 1], his remarks have revealed a well justified genuine under-the-table fear for the flesh and blood American soldiers in this region. Using the swelling federal debts as an excuse, Trump is speaking for each individual foot soldier’s concern of personal safety and his/her family’s worry. When any one of the missiles from North Korea could not be intercepted, many American GIs would die without mercy immediately. Trump’s words are out of lips after careful calculations.

Sending troops abroad for “defending the post-Second World War liberal international order — an imperative that every U.S. president since Harry Truman has appreciated” [Note 2] is based on an assumption that it is a man-against-man battle involving protective helmets, tactics, intelligence and most importantly, conventional weapons. When it is ‘nuclear bomb-against-man’, the above assumption is no longer valid.

Saying that Trump “only has experts on Middle East affairs … but no analyst specializing in Asian matters” [Note 3] is a foolish comment. Trump does not need an expert on this issue. It is simply and straightly common sense as Trump knows how hateful the American public is to read the body count of deaths. One single nuclear strike may kill 10,000 or more GIs, let alone many other civilians of American and other nationalities. Trump is telling the American voters that Pyongyang really means it when Kim Jong-un is capable of bombarding South Korea and Japan with missiles carrying nuclear warheads — “if they do, they do” [Note 4] — on the one hand, and assuring his electorate that he cares about their life and property, on the other. It is why Trump has been reiterating his unthinkable solution of arming Seoul and Tokyo with nuclear capabilities so that the Asians can fight against each other without Americans on this piece of dangerous soil subject to radiation. Using an economic reason can avoid the moral question on breaking up the alliance.

Trump’s proposal will have long-term impacts on the White House’s foreign policy. When the next President of the United States, whoever, knows that he or she cannot afford the consequences of informing the whole country of the large quantities of deaths and wounds in East Asia, this leader will not hesitate to pull out all the troops from Korea and Japan when the nuclear threat has been confirmed ‘real’.

If Seoul is still unwilling to take up this nuclear responsibility, conventional combats along the ‘38th parallel north’ would not be too bloody Park Guen-hye’s forces as their weaponry is much more advanced. However, the victories here cannot prevent Pyongyang from conducting military intrusions (not invasion) into South Korea — assailing the coastal areas to capture hostages, hijacking cargo vessels, and looting cities and towns near the seashores for consumables — to take all types of advantages. So long as the American GIs are absent, Kim would prefer to do something like drawing money out of ATMs regularly, rather than firing his limited quantity of nuclear warheads [Note 5].

The former president Lee Myung-bak’s mistake of abandoning the ‘sun-shine’ policy which showed how a nation gained strength “not by banditry, but economic production” has been irreversible [same Note 5]. Among the various new options, Seoul’s wisest move is to convince Beijing and Moscow that it is in their best as well as common interest to have Kim replaced by a much more controllable person, and then seal a deal among all the parties concerned to maintain nuclear non-proliferation, peace and order in East Asia. It is difficult to foresee whether China and Russia can have a good bargain in this deal but the United States is definitely a loser at least in terms of its credibility as an ally.

[Note 1]

2016 Mar 28

Korea Joongang Daily, “Dangerous remarks from Trump”, March 28, 2016.

http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/Article.aspx?aid=3016744

[Note 2]

The Diplomat, “Nukes for South Korea and Japan? Donald Trump sees no problem”, Marc 27, 2016

http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/nukes-for-south-korea-and-japan-donald-trump-sees-no-problem/

[Note 3]

The Asahi Shimbun, “Trump’s remarks about Asia cause bewilderment, unease in Japan”, March 30, 2016.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201603300035.html

[Note 4]

CNN, “Trump on potential war between Japan and N Korea, ‘If they do, they do’”, Apr 3, 2016.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/04/02/politics/donald-trump-war-japan-north-korea/index.html

[Note 5]

FPIF, Keith K C Hui, “You think North Korea is aggressive now?”, March 9, 2016.

http://fpif.org/think-north-korea-aggressive-now/


Keith K C Hui is a Chinese University of Hong Kong graduate, a Fellow of The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (UK), and the author of Helmsman Ruler: China’s Pragmatic Version of Plato’s Ideal Political Succession System in The Republic, Singapore: Traffor.

 

[China Connection]

It is pretty clear that we will see World War Three by this year's end. All Trump is saying to North Korea is that things are going to get worse for them if he gets in. So Dear Leader will think that it is time he made his move. If Syria gets a go on then Dear Leader will be happy.


Most of the so-called leaders in the West have opened the floodgates to Muslim immigration knowing that it will end in a bloodbath. I honestly can't see things holding together past Christmas. As the Pope said we have seen our last Christmas

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...bout-one-thing-nato-is-obsolete-a6973231.html

Donald Trump is right about one thing: Nato is obsolete

There are times when an iconoclast speaks a truth that others are unprepared to face, and this is one of them

Mary Dejevsky |@IndyVoices | Thursday 7 April 2016 | 23 comments

All right, so Donald Trump looks slightly less likely to become the next President of the United States than he did a week ago. He was soundly beaten by Ted Cruz in the Republican primary in Wisconsin, a swing state that may be a more accurate gauge of overall electability than most. Nor has he given any even a hint of reining in his unguarded self, although his statements on abortion could already have cost him a large part of the female vote.

But the fact that this untamed politician says things that are widely unacceptable, or just plain daft, does not automatically make everything he says wrong. As with George Galloway here at home, it well suits those who disagree with him to damn all his views by association. But there are times when an innocent or an iconoclast speaks a truth that others are unprepared to face.

Trump’s description of Nato – the hallowed North Atlantic alliance – as “obsolete” is a case in point. His terseness may have shocked, but he is right.

So are his reasons. As currently constituted, he says, Nato is ill-suited to combating international terrorism, which is for him the world’s “single biggest threat”. He especially objects to the US footing so much of the bill, saying that other allies should “pay up or get out”, and refuses to see the US as the “world’s policeman”. As he told a town hall meeting in Wisconsin: “Maybe Nato will dissolve and that’s OK, not the worst thing in the world.”

To judge by the response to his words, though, on both sides of the Atlantic, it would appear to be the worst thing, or close to it. In casting doubt on the future of Nato, Trump has challenged an establishment consensus that goes far beyond Washington DC. Both Trump’s Republican rivals have denounced his view. Hillary Clinton, the probable Democrat nominee, accused him of “putting at risk the coalition of nations we need to defeat Islamic State”.

Practically every general and admiral between the US and the Baltic States reached for their verbal swords. Every transatlantic think-tank, every Atlanticist professor, and even President Obama joined the fray. Trump’s words, said Obama, had shown that “he doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy... or the world generally”.

It is worth noting a couple of ironies here. Obama is on the record – in his last State of the Union address and in his recent Atlantic magazine interview – as rejecting, more explicitly than any of his immediate predecessors, a “world policeman” role for the US. Both he, and his former defence secretary, have also criticised the lacklustre contribution to the alliance of some Europeans. To question Nato’s very existence, however, is another matter. For a sitting president, countenancing the twilight of the North Atlantic alliance is a step far too far.

There are times, though - and this is one of them - when a measure of distance and “not knowing” may foster much-needed clarity. Seen from the perspective of 2016, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is not only “obsolete”, but has been so in spirit since 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, and in fact since the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed.

The end of the Cold War should have celebrated, and made final, by the dissolution of both the alliances of the era. In the event, only the Warsaw Pact was wound up. Nato survived, and has spent the best part of 30 years casting around for something else to do.

There are reasons why Nato was not disbanded. Some are understandable: there was so much going on, so many uncertainties to deal with, that there was no time to take on additional distractions. Nato also offered an element of solid security in a suddenly fluid world. Other reasons are, in their way, admirable. Those countries now freed from the extinct Soviet bloc still feared Russia and sought the defensive shelter they believed Nato could provide. The mistake was less to admit them, almost a decade later, than that the alliance was still there.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was a lost opportunity for a new security settlement across the whole of Europe. But a second opportunity was lost, too. During the late 1990s there were tensions between the US and the European Union, which had begun to harbour defence ambitions of its own. While Washington was all in favour of its European allies taking a greater interest in their own security, it did not want them to run their own show. Had the Europeans asserted themselves more, had the British been better Europeans, had Nato expansion not obscured the dilemma, the EU might now have its own defence union, albeit not without a – possibly unpleasant – split with Washington.

It is tempting to look back at what might have been - and specifically what different security arrangements for Europe might have prevented. The obvious example here is the Ukraine crisis and the new stand-off with Russia which gives Nato a revived (and thoroughly regrettable) purpose. In the end, though, perhaps the least contentious way for Nato to bow out would not be in a new 1991-style cataclysm, nor for the Europeans to declare defence independence, but for the US to conclude that the alliance is no longer in its national interest.

Or, as Donald Trump put it, that Nato is obsolete, that it may dissolve, and that’s OK.