Tucker Carlson on Wednesday doubled down on his assertion, made during his interview with President Trump, that defending the expansion of NATO might not serve America’s interests.
The specific example Carlson discussed with Trump was the addition of the country of Montenegro, a “relatively poor place” with “no critical natural resources and limited strategic significance,” and whether it serves our interests to put Americans in harm’s way to defend it from attack.
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“Montenegro has fewer residents than the District of Columbia,” said Carlson. “It’s a relatively poor place. It has no critical national resources and limited strategic significance. Few Americans could find it on a map or name its capital or its president. That’s not a slur against Montenegro, apparently it’s a nice place, but those are the facts about Montenegro.”
From the U.S. point of view, it’s “not an important country,” notes Carlson, but now, with its addition to the NATO alliance, it has “profound significance to every American.”
“That means that if Montenegro ever finds itself in a war, our military is pledged to defend it,” said Tucker. “That’s called a defense guarantee. Defense guarantees don’t seem like a big deal, until suddenly they are. That’s how the first world war started. 37 million casualties later the world began to rethink the wisdom of treaties like that. But the lesson seems to have been lost since.”
After replaying the clip of President Trump’s comments, Tucker praised him for “thinking about it.”
“Presidents are supposed to wonder about things like that,” he said. “Serious countries ought to have debates like that. The U.S. has to defend Montenegro? Really? Why is that? Is there a good reason? Let’s hear it. That’s the conversation we should be having. But the guardians of our public conversation are not serious people. They are hacks and buffoons.”
The question Americans should be asking, Carlson says, is whether NATO is still “serving America’s interests or is it imperilling them.”
“Official Washington does not want to answer or talk about them. They are trying to crush anyone who asks,” concluded the Fox News host. “We are not intimidated, obviously.”
