President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of his former acting attorney general Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO likely signals a confrontational and “bullying” approach toward the military alliance he has long railed against, analysts say.
That could present both vulnerabilities and opportunities for Canada, which has been under increased pressure to meet its defence spending commitments, those experts add. That pressure is expected to build further under a new Trump administration, whose representative to NATO is a relative newcomer to the diplomatic scene fully aligned with his president’s worldview.
“Appointing a loyalist with limited foreign policy experience and expertise might signal an intention (by Trump) to keep pushing his more confrontational and unilateral agenda,” Erika Simpson, an associate professor of international relations at Western University, told Global News in an email.
If Whitaker is confirmed, Simpson said he may bring “more hardline rhetoric, pressure tactics, America First tactics that strain the alliance’s norms of consensus and cooperation.”
In a social media post after Trump’s announcement Wednesday, Whitaker said he “look(s) forward to strengthening relationships with our NATO Allies and standing firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability.”
Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and served as acting attorney general between November 2018 and February 2019 as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference was drawing to a close. He had been chief of staff to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, before being picked to replace his boss after Sessions was fired over his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
Whitaker has since been a vocal critic of the U.S. Justice Department he once led, particularly in defending Trump against the four criminal indictments against him. He has little foreign policy or national security experience, making him a relative unknown to many in U.S. security circles.
His nomination as NATO ambassador will still need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. If approved, it will break a precedent under previous presidents of ambassadors with years of diplomatic, political or military credentials.
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But David Welch, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo who studies foreign policy, says Whitaker’s lack of apparent qualifications for the job “fits a pattern” with Trump’s cabinet nominations that prioritize “patronage” and people “he thinks he can control.”
“He’s not in a position to give Trump qualified advice about NATO matters,” he said in an interview. “That would be a key function for the NATO ambassador to report back with advice to the leader. And he’s just not going to be able to do that.”
Trump’s first NATO ambassador, former U.S. senator from Texas Kay Bailey Hutchison, was a defender of the alliance during and after her tenure, including the necessity of U.S. leadership within it. Although she had no diplomatic experience, she was heavily involved in foreign policy matters in the Senate.
Trump has for years taken aim at NATO and members that don’t meet the alliance’s benchmark of spending at least two per cent of GDP on defence. Earlier this year, Trump said that, when he was president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.”
Former Trump administration officials, including his one-time national security advisor John Bolton, have said Trump may push to withdraw the U.S. from the alliance.
Whitaker’s appointment at the very least suggests Trump “will be changing (America’s) commitment to NATO,” Steven Lamy, professor emeritus of international relations at the University of Southern California, said in an email.
“Whitaker is not appointed to lead a renewed commitment to NATO and Ukraine,” he wrote. “Trump does not like the spending and, more importantly, the Article 5 commitment” to mutual defence in the event of an attack on any member.
In a Fox News interview during the 2019 NATO summit, Whitaker criticized alliance members that have “taken advantage of the United States” by not meeting the NATO benchmark, which he said has allowed those countries to “support socialized medicine and other experiments.”
Although he recognized that the U.S., as the major democratic military superpower, is “always going to have to spend more than our fair share to make sure democracy and freedom is defended worldwide, at the same time that doesn’t mean that the people we have aligned with should get to sort of ride on our coattails.”
He said Trump, who was president at the time, was “implementing that vision” within the alliance.
NATO says 23 member countries are currently meeting the two per cent GDP target, up from just three in 2014. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has spurred additional military spending by many European members, and Sweden and Finland both joined the pact in the wake of the war.
Biden has taken credit for pushing allies to increase their defence spending, but so has Trump.
The U.S. has long outspent the NATO benchmark and currently spends 3.38 per cent of its GDP on defence.
Canada is one of just eight members not meeting the two per cent threshold. Its updated defence policy forecasts spending will rise from 1.37 per cent of GDP currently to 1.76 per cent by 2030.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed this year Canada’s defence spending will hit two per cent by 2032, although the parliamentary budget officer last month said the government’s plan for achieving that is unclear.
While that could cause friction with NATO and a future Ambassador Whitaker, Welch said Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, was a qualified choice who could help ease diplomatic pain points between the two countries.
If Whitaker is confirmed and pushes Trump’s tactics, Simpson said it will require strong pushback from NATO members, she said.
“Canada has long valued the alliance’s established processes and diplomatic decorum so I would hope we would see polite feedback from Canada as a founding NATO ally and not too many ‘I am sorry’s,” she wrote.
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