France tells US NATO serves Euro-Atlantic security, not Hormuz offensive missions

Just another thing Putin and Trump have in comon.

Its gonna match Putins narrative really well if "Nato" suddenly attaks Iran - it all sems scripted right out of Kremlin.

"You're supposed to defend me from the consequences of my own stupidity!"

you have explain allies friends treaties history to a toddler

No defense for the aggressor, even if the victim strikes back.

Malignant narcissists experience a DOCUMENTED perception of danger, and the belief that they are not out of danger unless they are dominating others. I’m not saying this to defend him. I am saying this to explain his failure to differentiate between defense and offense. It’s not that he is having trouble understanding that NATO is a defensive alliance. It’s that he is having trouble understanding the concept of defense. And especially to understand a separation between defense and offense. He also has dementia.

Conservatives have never understood this. One of their objections to Ukraine joining NATO is that Ukraine could attack whoever they wanted and then use Article 4 to force all the other NATO members to invade them too. No, I did not mean Article 5. I have seen them specifically cite Article 4. Their objections to lots of things (progressive tax brackets is another good example) are entirely based in just being really stupid and not having any idea how they work.

Well, they’re not wrong. Unfortunately, right and wrong aren’t concepts Trump‘s ever strongly embraced.

Yeah but the USA thinks offence is the best defense so they don't see where the problem is

So you're telling me if the UK declares war on India, the US, France, Germany, Poland etc won't send their militaries to reconquer it for us???

NATO exists so that the US/USSR war wasn't fought on the US shores, but on Europe.

it has play offensive roles prior though, it is a guaranteed defensive alliance but it acted offensively in the balkans and libya at the very minimum.

Let’s be honest, NATO was expressly about compelling US involvement in Western Europe’s wars and to defend Western Europe.

The admin's request is silly, but the idea that NATO is exclusively defensive is simply not correct. Serbia was bombed by NATO and that wasn't a defensive action.

But... but... it was a pre-emptive strike, they totally were just about to attack us, we just defended ourselves ahead of time! /s

Uh, I don't remember the Taliban attacking anyone outside of Afghanistan. And Osama turned out to be hiding in Pakistan. NATO still joined the US in that conflict. Then there's Bosnia. I don't blame NATO for not wanting to get involved in Iran, but the alliance hasn't been entirely defensive in it's recent history. Though I suppose one can justify those cases as being UN mandated invasions.

Then why did NATO militarily terrorize the middle-east for 20 years along with the US? Which part of EU soil does Iraq and Afganistan fall under?

I honestly don't see how it won't happen...Vlad played his cards right and now Agent Orange is doing his bidding.

China don't care. All the nato countries that would do anything against them have other commitments in Asia. It wouldn't change much, besides isolating America but that's happening anyway.

There would be a fair bit of goofy infighting and tense negotiation at first, but I firmly believe NATO would just rebrand, reorganize, and persist as a European-based defensive alliance without the US. Wouldn't carry the weight of the US nuclear deterrence anymore, but would still be the second-largest conventional military force in the world, a force that can perform a clear-eyed review of the Russian failures in Ukraine and the US failures in Iran in order to reorganize and rebuild into a modern fighting force able to handle asynchronous and drone-based warfare. Strong enough to push Russia back as needed and deter any military pressure from China or others. The US would get frozen out and steadily see its foreign bases be removed one by one from NATO territory, and find out what life is like outside of the NATO forcefield. They might lose their minds for a while, but eventually the false idea of US exceptionalism would finally fade, and the globe could slowly reorder itself into whatever the new balance would be.

Europe has made plans for that already. It will just be NATO w/o the US

I am not even sure that Xi Jinping would be particularly happy about it. China is mostly trying to expand its commercial power in Europe, I don't see any military intent. NATO wouldn't be intervening if China decided to take Taiwan (or at least wouldn't *have to*, individual countries could decide to make a stance, but I doubt it). With Putin that is a different story.

Putin is a b**** and can't do shit anyways, and Europe only gets stronger and more independent form it. China has little interest in Europe outside of business I imagine.

I think everyone can see the writing on the wall. Europe is on its “own” 

That's being overly generous. I doubt he ever graduated past tic tac toe.

Not even that, since it's so abundantly clear he's lost his marbles.

Trumps board consists of 1 king and 15 pawns

He hasn’t gotten past eating his crayons.

He hasn't got any.

Not just defensive. Iran fails Article 6 of the treaty. NATO is the North Atlantic treaty, and Iran is not in the North Atlantic. Plus, they've made no actual requests for assistance, just some dementia patient ranting on the toilet, on a store-brand twitter.

No one cares what Putin says however

Agent Krasnov strikes again

Nous faisons de notre mieux pour maintenir le lien transatlantique. Toutefois, nous avons une limite.

..Did people just forget that 20 years in Afghanistan ever happened? I think everyone else in NATO learned their lesson about fighting pointless war in the ME during that conflict.

Addressing a press conference at Downing Street, Starmer stated, “Let me say once again, this is not our war. We will not be drawn into the conflict that is not in our national interests.” I mean I can phone Kier and ask him to be clearer for you?

This feels like an odd take away from this story. The UK has corrected Trump a number of times and until Iran drone strike on Cyprus, was readying a carrier strike group to the seas around Greenland. Just because a country isn’t making headline rebuttals, doesn’t mean they are rolling over.

It's much easier when you have a very small dependence on the american military-industrial complex (even if some of the equipment is not as good as what usa make). I think the most critical dependence france have on USA right now are the aircraft carrier catapults. Which could delay the next AC generation, but it's way less critical than the britain dependencies (fighter jets, SLBM...)

Even though Iraq turned out to be bullshit as far as WMDs were concerned, Afghanistan was the result of the 9/11 attacks, which triggered NATO’s Article 5. In this case, it’s the US who’s doing the attacking and therefore NATO really has no business waging this offensive war.