NATO Preparing 'Trump-Proof' Plan B for Ukraine: Report

The NATO alliance is planning new measures to protect its campaign of support for Ukraine, according to a new report, as fears grow that a second White House term for Donald Trump will hinder collective efforts to defeat and deter Russia.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday—citing unnamed U.S. and allied officials—that this month's NATO summit in Washington D.C. will see several new measures announced in a bid to shore up the Western bloc amid political turbulence in Europe and the U.S.

The plans have reportedly been in progress for several months, but are now being accelerated following President Joe Biden's poor performance in the first presidential debate last week.

Newsweek cannot independently verify the WSJ report and has contacted NATO via email to request comment.

Among the reported measures will be the stationing of a new senior civilian official in Kyiv and the establishment of a new military command in the western German city of Wiesbaden to coordinate military aid and training for Ukrainian forces.

The new command will be called "NATO Security Assistance and Training for Ukraine," and will be staffed by around 700 American and allied personnel drawn from all 32 member states. The organization will reportedly take on much of the work of equipping Ukraine that has thus far been dominated by the Pentagon via the Ramstein format—officially the Ukraine Defense Contact Group.

Trump has made little effort to hide his frustration with NATO allies, who he has repeatedly accused of taking advantage of American security largesse in Europe.

During his first term, the former president routinely attacked allied leaders for failing to meet their defense spending pledges; allies agreed in 2014 to spend 2 percent of their GDPs on the militaries by 2024, a target many have missed.

At the fractious alliance summit in London in 2018, Trump even reportedly threatened to withdraw the U.S. from NATO unless allies showed more commitment to "burden sharing." The reported threat proved empty, but the prospect of a second Trump administration has revived concerns of an American retreat that could prove fatal for the alliance.

It appears clear that Trump will return to the foreign policy stance that so perturbed American allies during his first term. "NATO has to treat the U.S. fairly, because if it's not for the United States, NATO literally doesn't even exist," Trump said in March.

"The United States should pay its fair share, not everybody else's fair share," Trump said. "We have an ocean in between some problems[...]we have a nice big, beautiful ocean," he added. "[NATO] is more important for [European countries], they will take an advantage."

In February, the former president even suggested he would "encourage" Russia and China to "do whatever the hell they want" to NATO nations who fail to "pay your bills."

This is a year of pivotal elections, both in Europe and in the U.S. In June, NATO- and European Union-skeptic far-right parties in Europe have won big at the European Parliament elections, raising concerns about the rightward-slide of electorates in Germany, France, and other key NATO states.

In France, the resounding defeat of President Emmanuel Macron's party at the EU level prompted the internationalist leader to call snap domestic parliamentary elections, which may see the National Rally (RN) party form the country's first ever far-right government.

RN's 2022 electoral manifesto—sections of which were deleted from the party's website in June—suggested that the U.S. "does not always behave as an ally to France," and proposed to seek "an alliance with Russia on certain issues," including European security and combating terrorism.

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