During his first administration, Donald Trump, failing to understand either the purpose of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the equitable allocation of operating responsibilities among its members, launched an assault on the NATO Alliance that has only intensified during the first months of his second administration. 

His most recent and most serious offensive is an utterly unhinged threat to take possession of Greenland, the sovereign territory of our NATO partner, Denmark.

Having both lived in Denmark and spent my entire post-A school Navy enlistment assigned to a NATO Command headquarters, duty calls me to speak to this President’s ignorance of history and his consistently irresponsible untruths about both Greenland and the Alliance.

Denmark’s resistance to the Nazi’s during WWII was unparalleled in occupied Europe and it was among the first 12 signatories to the North Atlantic Treaty. Today, the Danes maintain a military establishment primarily to support NATO missions and spend about the same percentage of their GNP on their military as we do. Denmark gained exclusive control of Greenland (previously shared with the Norwegians for a millennium) by treaty in 1814 and the Danes granted self-rule to the Greenlanders in 2009.  The idea that the US has any claim on Greenland would be laughable were it not so outrageous.

During my 3½ years assigned to NATO, I supervised the NATO Southern Region Commander’s briefing and war rooms at Headquarters in Naples, at our battle headquarters in a tunnel under a mountain, and at sea when the Flag deployed to the fleet.

What I observed during hundreds of briefings and numerous live and communications exercises left me with an abiding admiration for both the Alliance’s mission and for the deep commitment to collective security I witnessed from its military and political leaders. Their devotion to that commitment has not only maintained the peace in Europe and the North Atlantic for nearly 80 years but was instrumental in bringing down the Soviet Union and liberating nearly 300 million people from the yoke of Soviet tyranny without armed conflict. 

Treating Denmark like a mere obstruction to our control over Greenland and treating our NATO partners as dispensable are stances more befitting an ignorant bully than a U.S. President.

So, when an email arrived from the Executive Director of Veterans for Responsible Leadership, Scott Peoples, about Trump’s assault on NATO, I immediately wrote Scott asking permission to share it with our readers, and he agreed.  It follows:

“For most US veterans, the NATO alliance is something we hold dearly and cherish with everything we have. The last 80 years for the western world has been the safest and most prosperous in human history and a big part of that is thanks to the NATO alliance.

For anyone that has ever served with our brothers and sisters from our NATO allied countries, we know that they are some of the most professional and dedicated warriors in the entire world. The only time Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all) in the NATO treaty has ever been invoked was after the 9/11 attacks on America. After the attacks, there were soldiers deployed from every one of our allied countries to fight and die with the US in Afghanistan and then Iraq. They fought in defense of American values and the American way of life and for that we will never be able to say thank you enough.

For most veterans, we each have a unique story about how the NATO alliance has impacted our service and our lives. For me, as an 82nd Airborne veteran that served in the Global Response Force Brigade, I remember doing countless training missions with paratrooper units from our NATO allied countries. We would have a moving ceremony when the training was complete where we would exchange jump wings with the country that we did a jump with. I still hold the German jump wings that I have near and dear to my heart.

VFRL has already heard from numerous other members about how much the NATO alliance meant to them and why what President Trump has been doing to destroy the greatest alliance the world has ever known is angering them so much. Please keep sending us your stories because we love reading them and we want you to know that we feel your outrage too.

Being in the military we know how important taking care of your friends and allies is to strategic success. But other than that, it is just the right and moral thing to do. Honor, integrity, and selfless service is what is supposed to make this country great and President Trump is spitting in the face of all of that. He is a draft dodger and the entire Trump family has never served a day in uniform in their entire lives and it shows.

In these troubled times, it is important to reach out to any NATO ally you may still keep in contact with or put on your social media about how grateful we are to them because we want them to know that there are still millions of Americans that are disgusted by the way that President Trump is treating them. It is only going to make America weaker and more isolated from the rest of the world. 

We can no longer claim in this moment to be the leader of the free world, but that is why it is so crucial to keep fighting and keep trying to elect principled leaders in the midterms that will respect and strengthen our alliances and prove to the rest of the world that America is better than this. 

If you are looking to do something and take action today that is good for our democracy and good for your soul please check out this link to see if there is anything in your community to take part in. As the NATO motto goes, “We are NATO and we are stronger together. 

In Service to Country and Constitution,
Scott Peoples
Executive Director of Veterans for Responsible Leadership”