NATO should be tested by invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and deploy troops along the US-Mexico border to ‘protect from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants’. (Photo: Reuters)
US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly expressed apprehension about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), saying that he doubts if the alliance would come to the aid of America if the country were attacked, has suggested that it should be put to a test.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump suggested that NATO should be tested by invoking Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and deploy troops along the US-Mexico border to ‘protect from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants’.
“Maybe we should have put NATO to the test: Invoked Article 5, and forced NATO to come here and protect our Southern Border from further Invasions of Illegal Immigrants, thus freeing up large numbers of Border Patrol Agents for other tasks,” Trump said.
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty is the principle of collective defense, and states that an armed attack against one NATO member is considered an attack against all members.
Despite Trump’s repeated assertion that NATO won’t come to the aid of the US if the country were under attack, history shows that the only time Article 5 was invoked was by Washington.
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Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty was invoked, and it led to collective military operations in Afghanistan.
In the more than 20 years of the NATO military operation in Afghanistan, a total of 3,486 troops were killed in the country.
This includes 2,461 Americans, 457 Britons, 159 Canadians, 90 French, 62 Germans, and 53 Italians.
Denmark, a founding member of NATO, lost 44 of its personnel in Afghanistan, the highest per-capita loss among coalition forces.
The high per-capita death toll of Danish troops was in the spotlight recently amid Trump’s push to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of Denmark.
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Trump, who has been critical of NATO, had even claimed that its troops did not fight on the front line in Afghanistan.
“We’ve never needed them. They’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines,” Trump told Fox News.
This, however, has not gone down well with many NATO allies.
“The president was wrong to diminish the role of NATO troops, including British forces, in Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Article 5 of the NATO treaty was invoked for the first time and British forces served alongside American and other Allied troops in sustained combat operations,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Spokesperson said.
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“457 British personnel were killed in Afghanistan, more wounded. Many suffered life-changing injuries. Their sacrifice and others were made in service of security and in response to an attack on an ally,” the spokesperson added.
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