“No one can assume Article 5 is there to be triggered”
A former chief of staff of Portugal’s armed forces has added to the dystopian feel of the times to say that, the way he sees it, “NATO is dead at this moment” since “there is no transatlantic link” between the current US administration of Donald Trump and European nations.
“How can there be a transatlantic link with a person who says the things that Mr. Trump says? That Mr. Vance came here to Europe to say? What the Secretary of Defence came here to Europe to say? There is none,” General Luís Valença Pinto has told Lusa.
Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces between 2006 and 2011, the general considered that currently no one “can assume with ease” that Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty – which establishes that an attack against one of the NATO member countries is an attack against all – “is there to be triggered”.
This is one of two articles that Valença Pinto classified as essential in NATO’s founding treaty. The other, “also important, but not as decisive as this one, is Article 4” concerning “consultation between allies”.
“How can there be consultation between allies when the climate is one of absolute dispute, almost of offence, almost of outrage, coming from the United States?” he quizzes.
In the opinion of General Valença Pinto, NATO “is there, formally” and “the best thing that can happen to it is to be frozen once again”, considering that this is difficult in the current context.
“At this moment, unlike what happened in (…) in Trump’s first term, we have a sad thing, a serious thing, which is called a conflict that Russia imposed on Ukraine and, therefore, it is very difficult to remain frozen when you have something like this next door, on the same continent”.
Asked about the statement made by the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs, Pedro Duarte, who on Wednesday, in a debate on the subject in the Assembly of the Republic, stated that the relationship between Portugal and the USA is “absolutely fundamental” and does not depend on “momentary contexts”, Valença Pinto considered it to be “a statement of good will”.
The general stressed that Donald Trump has a four-year term, and “it does not appear that he will moderate his language” or his “attitude and behavior”.
“There is no pseudo-Atlanticism that can, in my opinion – and I say this with great regret – support the idea that this is a passing thing. This is not a passing cloud, this is a four-year storm with major manifestations of squalls,” he predicted.
And, the fact that millions of Portuguese people live in North American territory or the commercial relationship between the two countries should not “change or condition” Portugal’s vision in relation to the USA.
“Our vision has to be built in light of reality. How does the United States view the world and Europe in particular? (…) They view Europe with contempt and animosity, period. And the best we can do is to deplore this and then work constructively with our European partners. Not against the United States, of course, but in favor of peace, human rights, freedom, the right to expression, the rule of law,” he argued.
Valença Pinto considered that “it is high time that Europe, once and for all, took care of its security and defence”.
Stating that the idea of a possible European army is just “a soundbite”, the general highlighted that NATO does not have its own army either, but rather “a set of forces that countries assign to the Atlantic Alliance, with different degrees of connection, some more ready, others less ready”.
In the general’s opinion, “this is what the European Union has to do: defence planning”.
“We are at a time, here in Europe, when, as in other areas of the European process, defence will be the seat of a process of shared sovereignty and one of two things: either Portugal wants to be part of this process of shared sovereignty, associating itself with others or, if it does not want to, it will be completely marginalised and relegated to a secondary role in the European process”, he concluded.
It has been yet another stark intervention in a week full of them. In a month full of them, in fact. And today particularly social media is sharing information that broke in 2021, suggesting that Donald J. Trump was recruited as an asset by Moscow in 1987…
source material: LUSA
