Aleksei Navalny, hero to the free world, has joined the tragic line of Vladimir Putin critics who met untimely poisonings, exploding planes and defenestrations from high-floor windows.
His murder in a Siberian prison makes it all the more disgusting that any American presidential candidate would embrace a thug like Putin, and questions whether enablers of Donald Trump, who just invited Russia to attack the United States’ closest of allies,have any concept of world history.
A basic recollection is essential to understanding this moment.
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In April 1949, the world reeled from unspeakable horrors. An estimated 85 million people suffered agonizing deaths in WWII. Among them: 45 million soldiers smeared across battlefields, 25 million people starved to death and 11 million Jews, gays and other minorities who drew their last breath in Hitler’s maniacal death camps.
Allied forces emerged from the war determined to forge a collective defense for the future. The North Atlantic Treaty established NATO and gave teeth to a free world order governed by the rule of law.
Prized for its armed deterrence, NATO delivered somber recognition that although Hitler was gone, the power-lust, brutality and villainy that drives men like Trump would remain. For NATO signatories still limping from the war, the question wasn’t if Hitler-caliber evil would reappear on the global stage, but when.
Inviting an enemy to attack NATO allies is treason
NATO, sprung from a binding war and peacetime treaty, is more than an aspiration. Under revered and foundational text of the U.S. Constitution, treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate are the supreme law of the land.
For 75 years, America and her European allies have pledged under the treaty that an armed attack against any NATO member would trigger the same military obligations from all NATO members. Under NATO’s article 5, in the event of such an attack, each member state vows to take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”
Last week, in insult to and derogation of this commitment, an ex-president who tried to stay in power by force publicly encouraged Russia, a present enemy, “to do whatever the hell they want” to NATO allies, to punish them for failure to dedicate 2 percent of their GDP to defense spending.
Since he invaded Ukraine in 2022, Putin has threatened America and NATO with the use of nuclear weapons. Any such attack by Russia at Trump’s behest would trigger NATO’s collective military obligations and activate wartime responses with unfathomable consequences.
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Putin is a war criminal and murderous KGB agent. As he brandishes his world-annihilating nuclear arsenal, he is wanted before the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Trump’s suggestion that Putin attack NATO allies wasn’t just stupid. It put America and her allies in real danger, in aid and comfort to a current enemy.
It was treason.
Treason is a term often tossed around but little understood.
Its constitutional definition is straightforward. As Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 states: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
What could give Putin more ‘aid and comfort’ than Trump’s encouragement- shot across the free world- to attack our allies? Small wonder Putin saw the green light to murder his most formidable challenger. Even though Putin poisoned Navalny with a KGB nerve agent known as “Novichok” in 2020, one waits for Trump to post on Truth Social that Navalny died at the hands of a Biden-orchestrated “witch hunt.”
An alarmed world reacts to Trump’s ignorance
Trump’s new level asininity hit the world stage just as the American intelligence community was learning about Russia's potential nuclear capacity to disable American defense space satellites.
Trump’s demonstration of ignorance sent shockwaves around the world. The rebukes were swift:
Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General: Trump’s comments “undermine all of our security including that of the U.S., and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz: “Any relativization of NATO’s guarantee of assistance is irresponsible and dangerous and is solely in Russia’s interests.”
Charles Michel, president of the European Council: “Reckless statements on #NATO’s security and Art 5 solidarity serve only Putin’s interest. They do not bring more security or peace to the world…”
President Joe Biden: Trump just “sent a dangerous, and shockingly, frankly, un-American signal to the world… The whole world heard it… No other president in history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator…”
Any of these world leaders might have educated Trump, as well as America’s ignorant, that the only time the NATO mutual defense pact has ever been invoked was when European allies came to the aid of the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
We didn’t go to war for NATO allies. NATO allies went to war for us.
Receiving NATO benefits for decades then refusing to reciprocate makes us look like an addled bully unfit to lead.
Trump’s weird Putin bromance
Trump, who continues to argue before the United States Supreme Court that he is above the law, admires dictators. He has fought NATO’s anti-dictator objectives for years.
In 2020, according to Politico, Trump told European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that “if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” adding, “By the way, NATO is dead, and we will leave, we will quit NATO.”
Two years later, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Trump praised Putin as “a guy who is very savvy.” He said he considered Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius.”
Trump — close to securing the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination while facing 91 felony counts — has long fawned over Putin.
The admiration appears to be mutual. Despite clear evidence that Russia deployed social media bots to interfere in the 2016 presidential election on Trump’s behalf, Trump handed Putin “an unalloyed diplomatic triumph” by rejecting the conclusions of America’s own intelligence, per the Washington Post.
Since then, Putin’s online troll army has not relented. As Thom Hartmann detailed:
Putin uses his internet troll army to convince the GOP base to demand their politicians abandon Ukraine and NATO … Just a few months ago, the US intelligence community released a report to 100 countries letting them know that Russia is attacking democracies by trying to sow dissent and mistrust among their people, largely through social media and sympathetic influencers. The (report advised that) Russia is pursuing operations to degrade public confidence in the integrity of elections themselves. For Russia, the benefits of these operations are twofold: to sow instability within democratic societies, and to portray democratic elections as dysfunctional and the resulting governments as illegitimate.
In seeking to destroy democratic governments, Trump isn’t the only useful idiot at Putin’s disposal. Right-wing media idiots such as Tucker Carlson are also in the game, and it’s working. After the Senate approved $60 billion in bipartisan aid to Ukraine last week, Trump’s Capitol Hill mouthpiece, Speaker Mike Johnson, promised it would not see a vote in the House.
Using defense spending is a ruse
After Trump tried to sic Putin on America’s allies, MAGA tried to justify the unjustifiable, by stressing that 19 of NATO’s 30 members are spending below the target of 2% of their annual GDP on defense.
But this talking point ignores Europe’s nearly $47 billion in financial and budgetary support, humanitarian aid, macro-financial economic aid and emergency assistance to Ukraine to keep its economy afloat as it fights bombs and an outsized army of conscripted Russian convicts.
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Several NATO members are already exceeding NATO’s 2% guideline. Poland spends over 3.9% of its annual GDP, more than the United States. Romania, Hungary, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia each spend between 2.3 percent and 2.7 percent.
All NATO nations had already begun moving toward spending 2 percent after Putin illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014. Trump had nothing to do with it.
Trump would start WWIII to serve his own ego
Trump has invited Russia, a current enemy, to attack American allies while urging his congressional supporters to aid Russia by turning their backs on Ukraine.
Trump’s ignorance has put American interests at risk. Simply suggesting that the United States will disavow its military obligations instantly weakens our alliances.
Given Trump’s instability, and the social fissures he has worked so hard to cultivate, our longtime European partners may in fact be safer by distancing themselves from the United States, emboldening not only Putin’s Russia, but China, Iran, North Korea and terrorist proxies in the Middle East. Damage is already done. Whether it can be contained remains to be seen.
My grandfather, Gus Wirthwein, fought in WWII. One of the lucky ones, he got to come home with both legs to his farm in Huntingburg, Ind. At day’s end he liked to drink beer (Pabst) in front of a campfire and carve walnuts. He’d talk about the crops, the neighbor’s foal, the weather — near anything, except he would never talk about what happened to him during the war.
I only pray that wherever he is now, he doesn’t know what Trump has done, and will do to our NATO allies if given another chance.
Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Follow her on Substack.
Tucker Carlson speaking with attendees at the 2022 AmericaFest. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Then-President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin shake hands during a meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Summit in Hamburg,