Ex-NATO Commander Warns Trump Is ‘Greater Threat’ to Alliance Than Putin

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

President Donald Trump poses a “greater threat” to NATO than Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to one of the alliance’s most senior former commanders.

In a new interview with The Independent, General Sir Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former deputy supreme allied commander for Europe, pointed squarely at the president’s threats to seize Greenland and remarks about European troops.

“We have to take him literally,” he told the newspaper. “We have to assume with Trump, as with Putin, that the worst case will happen. Trump is the greater threat [to NATO] if you want to make the comparison. It’s Trump who gets the prize.”

The warning comes despite Trump’s insistence that he will not use force to take Greenland, a territory of NATO member Denmark.

Shirreff went further, suggesting that the president had “destroyed the international order” in the first year of his second term and was “on the way to destroying the one alliance that has guaranteed transatlantic security for 77 years.”

“The lead nation of the alliance has threatened the territorial integrity of another member,” Shirreff said. “How do you move on and rebuild trust? Nobody will trust Trump again.”

While arguing Russia remains an “existential threat” to Europe, Shirreff claimed that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had initially galvanized NATO unity, rather than weakening it. By contrast, he said, Trump has “decoupled America from European security” and left NATO “below the waterline.”

“Clearly, Putin threatened it massively but Trump has attacked the one alliance which grants our security,” Shirreff said, adding that the rules-based global system was now “a dead duck.”

In a comment to The Independent, the White House dismissed Shirreff’s remarks and said Trump “has done more for NATO than anyone,” and touted the U.S.’s contributions to the alliance in spending.

Of Greenland, the White House added: “The United States is the only NATO partner who can protect Greenland, and the President is advancing NATO interests in doing so.”

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