U.S. President Donald Trump attends a St. Patrick’s Day event in the East Room of the White House.Alex Wong/Getty Images
Aesop never met Donald Trump. Had he done so − had he been inspired to conjure a figure remotely like the U.S. President − he might have written a fable rooted in Mr. Trump’s conundrum as he seeks help to open the Strait of Hormuz this week.
To the stories of a boy crying wolf and a hungry grasshopper begging industrious ants for food, the prodigious storyteller of Ancient Greece might have added a boisterous president who insults his friends and then is surprised when they don’t rush to his aid in his hour of need.
America’s allies aren’t marching to Mr. Trump’s drumbeat because they don’t like the direction of the march and perhaps because they don’t like the drummer.
Their tepid response to Mr. Trump’s request (or, depending on your perspective, his demand) that they assist in securing safe passage for oil tankers in the world’s most vital shipping route is in a way the Revenge of Davos.
It was there, in the luxurious mountain fastness where the world’s plutocrats and political leaders − Mr. Trump qualifies as both − gathered this winter that the U.S. President unleashed an utterly bruising criticism of his country’s closest friends. He essentially dismissed them as losers − the worst possible profile in Mr. Trump’s view.
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In a gathering of the guardians of the West, he charged that their versions of civilization were crumbling. Disgraced. Doomed.
Woodrow Wilson may have thought the same thing when he drafted his Fourteen Points for world peace, which so many Europeans embraced as the potential dividend for the senseless carnage of the First World War. One of the abiding precepts of the American character in the period between colonial days and the beginning of the 20th century was a contempt for Europe, its monarchies and its aristocratic mien.
But the 28th president, in some ways an anglophile, cast his manifesto less as critique of the old ways than a roadmap to the new. He was cheered throughout the continent; no American president until John F. Kennedy was greeted by such adoring crowds. The world rushed to join his League of Nations, even though his own country rejected it.
For his part, Mr. Trump took an adversarial, even lecturing approach. He said that “certain places in Europe are not even recognizable any more,” adding, “And we can argue about it but there’s no argument.” Now what is not recognizable any more is the Western alliance.
NATO countries did not hesitate to help the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Now, even though an open Strait of Hormuz is arguably more in their interest − they are thirsty for the energy that ordinarily pours through the waterway − than in the interest of the United States, which has an enviable approximation of energy independence, they’re not eager to march in lockstep behind an American president who disdains, deplores and denigrates them.
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That sentiment has grown in recent days.
“We have some countries where we have 45,000 soldiers, great soldiers, protecting them from harm’s way, and we have done a great job,” Mr. Trump said Monday. “And well, we want to know: Do you have any mine sweepers? ‘Well, we’d rather not get involved, sir.’”
One of the possible reasons: They played no role, and were not consulted, in the drive to war in Iran.
“This is not our war − we did not start it,” said Boris Pistorius, Germany’s Defence Minister.
George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush conducted campaigns to draw other countries into their wars against Iraq. Bill Clinton and NATO countries joined forces in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo in 1999.
Mr. Trump, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, went into Iran alone, even though it’s not impossible that others might have joined the effort, given the fact Iran is a global pariah and an exporter of terrorism. Instead, Operation Epic Fury − Mr. Trump apparently picked the name from a series of options he was given − is pretty much a one-man show.
European leaders rebuff Trump’s calls for military help in Strait of Hormuz
“We don’t need anybody,” Mr. Trump said in frustration. He probably doesn’t. But war leadership can be lonely. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill drew ideas and succour from each other. William Lyon Mackenzie King liked being consulted as the Second World War unfolded. Harry Truman drew Canada, Great Britain, Australia and Turkey into the Korean War.
“In the hard fighting in Korea,” Mr. Truman said in an April, 1951, speech during the conflict, “we are proving that collective action among nations is not only a high principle but a workable means of resisting aggression.”
In truth it is not difficult to see the reluctance of America’s allies the way Mr. Trump does: as a stunning rebuff to a country that organized and underwrote the Western alliance while others contributed little.
“I’ve long said that I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this was a great test,” Mr. Trump said in the White House Tuesday.
It is impossible to measure this, but it is plausible that some allies are reluctant to assist Mr. Trump because both they and the President know that keeping gasoline prices and inflation under control is essential to Republican hopes to retain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm congressional elections in November.
In an e-mail to supporters this week, Mr. Trump politicized the war − a characteristic of conflict that U.S. presidents have traditionally strived to avoid. During the Vietnam period, both Democratic President Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon sought, with varying degrees of success, bipartisan support.
“NOW THAT DEMOCRATS SIDED WITH THE RADICAL REGIME IN IRAN,” Mr. Trump wrote, “IT HAS NEVER BEEN MORE IMPORTANT TO HOLD OUR MAGA MAJORITY DURING THE MIDTERMS!”