US Dept. of Defense: "U.S. Remains Committed to NATO"

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, center, briefs reporters while flying over the Atlantic Ocean en route to Brussels for a NATO Defense Ministerial.

As Defense Secretary "Mad Dog" Mattis headed to Brussels to meets with his NATO counterparts, a Defense Department press release delivers a serious stab wound to the heart of libertarian Trump Fanboys who misinterpreted Trump's statements during the election campaign as a desire to shut down NATO.

From the press release:

The United States remains committed to NATO, history’s most successful military alliance, as it transforms to match the changing character of war, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters traveling with him to this week’s NATO defense ministers conference in Brussels....

“Our commitment remains to NATO, [which is] … in the midst of transformation. Why? You've watched as the character of war over this last dozen years has changed itself, and as the character of war changes, so must the character of the militaries that address them,” Mattis said.

To underscore the alliance’s commitment to change, the secretary noted that the only NATO command with a headquarters in the United States is Allied Command Transformation.

Transformation Must Continue

“The whole point of that command is to transform NATO, so … we go to Brussels where we all get together, we talk about that transformation, [and] we guide it. NATO has transformed over these last 20 years, and it must continue to transform,” Mattis said...

On Feb. 17, Mattis will attend the Munich Security Conference in Germany, where he will hold a series of meetings with key international counterparts.

The trip will underscore the U.S. commitment to the NATO alliance and to defeating ISIS, according to a Feb. 10 DoD news release announcing the secretary’s trip.

The libertarian Trump fanboy view that Trump was anti-NATO was always an incorrect reading of his statements. I wrote such nearly a year ago on March 27, 2016:

It is a mistake to think Donald Trump wants to dismantle NATO, pack up and go home. At times, he, for sure, has called NATO obsolete, but this seems to be in the context of who is financing NATO and at other times the focus of threats the US and Europe face.

I then quoted Trump in the post discussing with The New York Times his view on NATO:

NATO is something that at the time was excellent. Today, it has to be changed. It has to be changed to include terror. It has to be changed from the standpoint of cost because the United States bears far too much of the cost of NATO.

Perhaps, libertarian Trump fanboys will yield on this point now that the DOD statement is out on official US policy relative to NATO during the Trump presidency. There is little that is anti-big government about Trump. As time goes on, Trump will pull the carpet from his libertarian fanboys on more and more issues and reveal by his actions that he is essentially a horrific statist that no libertarian should support and that libertarian support for Trump was a mistake,

-RW