Trump's NATO Threat & a Critical Election in Hungary (Question Time)

**Alastair Campbell** (0:00)
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**Dominic Sandbrook** (0:13)
Is NATO finished? I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled. Trump is the first president to really call it into question. And the longer that the second term has gone on, the more dicey its future has looked.

**Alastair Campbell** (0:26)
He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, Oh, yes, it's beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (0:38)
I know. So unsettling. How do you answer the anxieties of people? Because they're not just economic anxieties, are they? They're cultural anxieties about people who are frightened by change.

**Alastair Campbell** (0:48)
Too often we're liable to say, Oh, because you're being exploited by populists, somehow your grievance isn't real. Whereas what we should be doing is your grievance is real and we have to do something about it. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:04)
And with me, Dominic Sandbrook. Hello.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:05)
Hello, Dominic.
Stepping in for the absent Rory Stewart for the second time. Thank you very, very much indeed. Lots of questions. One of them relates to something we discussed on the podcast. We had a lot of questions on these lines. This is from Harper from Sandwell in the West Midlands. Is NATO finished? Wow.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:24)
I mean, I didn't think you had any listeners in the West Midlands, but I stand corrected.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:27)
We got listeners everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I mean, what about the history of history with your little sort of cultural cliques around universities, cities around the world? We spread far and wide.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:36)
Yeah. Every time I go and do a show at the Sydney Opera House, I really lament the fact that our audience is so limited and the rest is history, as you can well imagine.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:44)
I said universities, cities around the world.

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:47)
Yeah.

**Alastair Campbell** (1:48)
Carry on. Is NATO finished?

**Dominic Sandbrook** (1:50)
NATO finished. Is NATO finished? I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled.
From the 1940s when NATO began as an alliance, as an anti-communist alliance to keep the Americans in Europe and to hold the line against Stalin's Soviet Union. NATO ever since then has actually been pretty solid, I would say, as military alliances go. Trump is the first president to really call it into question. I think he clearly has no emotional investment in NATO, and the longer that the second term has gone on, the more dicey its future has looked. Obviously, the stuff with Canada and Greenland could have been toxic, absolutely toxic for NATO, and his rage, his anger and resentment at what he sees as the lack of European support for his, to my mind, very misguided war in Iran, I mean, I think that poses a real problem for NATO, because it's pretty clear now that he wants revenge, that he wants revenge in some way on the European countries that he thinks have abandoned him. What do you think?

**Alastair Campbell** (2:55)
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**Alastair Campbell** (4:00)
Let's just imagine that something happened to Estonia tomorrow. Now, when 9-11 happened, that's the only time ever that Article 5, an attack on one is an attack on all, was activated. It was activated in the United States, even though he since then insulted all the British, Australian, Denmark and other troops who were involved by saying they stayed away from the front line. And he said something very interesting in all places this week in the Daily Telegraph. He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, oh yes, it's beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way.