Trump Declares NATO 'Useless,' Demands Withdrawal from Hormuz Strait
Former US President Donald Trump has publicly chastised NATO, labeling the alliance as "useless" and explicitly calling for its disengagement from the Strait of Hormuz. This directive, delivered with his characteristic bluntness, challenges established military and diplomatic norms regarding the waterway, a chokepoint for more than 20% of the world's petroleum consumption. Mainstream outlets like
Fox News and Breitbart are already framing this as a calculated reassertion of 'America First' principles, portraying Trump as a maverick challenging obsolete global structures. They conveniently sidestep the fact that the US military, a direct participant and joint aggressor in numerous regional interventions, has consistently maintained a significant presence in the Persian Gulf, implicitly and
often explicitly relying on the collective security framework that NATO symbolizes, even if only in spirit for non-member states. This framing ignores the blatant hypocrisy of simultaneously denigrating an alliance while leveraging its geopolitical weight in other theaters. What these reports fail to address is the deeper historical context of US military posturing in the region, which has little
to do with NATO's operational involvement. For instance, the Strait of Hormuz has been a flashpoint for US strategic interests long before Trump's pronouncements. In 1988, the USS Vincennes, a guided-missile cruiser, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Strait, killing all 290 civilians aboard, including 66 children. Washington declared it a 'tragic accident' and awarded the Vincennes captain