Trump misunderstands NATO so badly, he thinks Brazil could be part of it

By Rick Noack
March 20 at 10:02 AM

For the United States’s NATO military allies, a good day is a day when President Trump forgets that they exist.

On bad days, he calls the alliance “as bad as NAFTA,” ponders whether it could result in World War III and raises questions about its future. Tuesday probably would fall into the category of bad days for NATO. Once again, Trump showed that he either doesn’t understand the alliance — or at least ignores everything he knows about it.

During a news conference with right-wing Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Trump said: “I also intend to designate Brazil as a major non-NATO ally, or even possibly — if you start thinking about it — maybe a NATO ally. I have to talk to a lot of people, but maybe a NATO ally.”

This might be an interesting suggestion — if Brazil was located somewhere between Greece and Britain. NATO stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organization and is a European-North American alliance, which is, in many ways, tailored to the two regions. To add Brazil, Trump wouldn’t just have to “talk to a lot of people,” but he also would need to get all NATO member states to agree to change Article 10 of the alliance’s 1949 founding treaty, which states that only European countries can join, besides Canada and the United States.

-snip-