Biden's Baltic Bombast
Ted Galen Carpenter
Security, United States, Europe
Does the Vice President care about the risks America takes on to protect tiny Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?
In his just-completed trip to the Baltic republics, Vice President Joe Biden reassured his hosts that the U.S. commitment to their security through NATO was rock solid. And any worries they might have because of comments that Donald Trump had made during the ongoing presidential campaign Biden dismissed as completely unwarranted. “I want to make it absolutely clear to all the people in Baltic states, we have pledged our sacred honor, the United States of America . . . to the NATO treaty and Article Five.”
He then speculated that because Trump had never held elective office, perhaps he did not understand the mutual defense obligation contained in that article. In any case, “the fact that you hear something” contrary to that treaty obligation “from a presidential candidate in the other party, it’s . . . nothing that should be taken seriously.” There was, Biden told his hosts, “continued overwhelming bipartisan commitment in the United States of America in both political parties to maintain our commitment to NATO.”
It is hard to tell which is the more offensive feature of Biden’s comments—the overall tone of smug arrogance or the implicit blasé attitude about the risks his own country incurs to protect the tiny Baltic republics. Both aspects indicate a man who is out of touch with key trends in America’s foreign-policy debate. But then Joe Biden is the official who actually argued that long-time Egyptian tyrant Hosni Mubarak was not a dictator. Being grounded in foreign-policy reality does not appear to be his strong suit.
Even though Hillary Clinton currently leads in the public-opinion polls, the election is still more than two months away. A lot can happen in that amount of time, and it is entirely possible that Donald Trump could become the next president of the United States. To tell an audience in a NATO-member country that they can simply dismiss what that individual has said about NATO is both illogical and irresponsible.
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