March 14, 2020

While listening to President Trump announce the European travel ban in his Oval Office address, my mind wandered back in time to the early G20 meetings of finance ministers and heads of government in 2009 when the United States and its European partners worked together to head off a global financial meltdown.

I then traveled back a little further in time to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, a day on which I found myself traveling on the Eurostar between London and Brussels, my two homes at the time. For the first time in NATO’s history, our European and Canadian allies triggered the alliance’s Article 5 commitment to common defense.

Going back to read the language of this provision, written in 1949 to deter Soviet aggression, it struck me that Trump could have produced a far more presidential moment this week if he had done what the Europeans did for the United States back then. He should offer the transatlantic community an Article 5 declaration of war against this deadly pathogen.

Read more:

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/14/op-ed-the-us-should-call-nato-to-action-and-defend-europe-against-coronavirus.html