He has made his feelings clear on X
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has called for the United States to leave the UN and NATO.
Musk made the remarks in a post on X yesterday evening.
Gunther Eagleman, a political commentator with 1.3 million followers, who describes himself as a ‘Proud America First MAGA Patriot’, wrote ‘It’s time to leave NATO and the UN’ in an X post on March 1.
Musk, who is now the leader of Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, reposted the message and simply wrote ‘I agree’.
Musk then reposted a tweet by Republican congressman Thomas Massie, the representative for Kentucky’s forth congressional district since 2012, which called NATO ‘a Cold War relic that needs to be relegated to a talking kiosk at the Smithsonian’.
Musk’s posts come in the wake of several Republicans calling for the country’s NATO membership to be reconsidered.
Utah senator Mike Lee, a longstanding NATO critic, has called the organisation a ‘cold war relic’ and argued that it offers a ‘great deal for Europe’ but a ‘raw deal for America’.
Musk’s role in the Trump administration means his endorsement of the anti-NATO movement could spell the end for the North Atlantic alliance.
Though Donald Trump has avoided actively calling for the US to leave NATO, he has consistently painted it as a one-sided relationship.
He told reporters that he doubted the value of spending money on NATO – since the US was protecting NATO members but they were ‘not protecting us’.
The White House is moving towards an isolationist, ‘America First’ rhetoric and the President has repeatedly criticised his fellow NATO allies for not increasing their defence spending quickly enough.
Trump called for European nations to up their military budgets to 5 per cent of GDP – far higher than the US’s own defence spending.
The 45th and 47th US president also said in February 2024 that he would encourage Russia to do ‘whatever the hell they want’ with any of the 32 NATO member states who failed to meet such ambitious defence spending targets.
NATO, the first peacetime military alliance the United States entered into outside of the Western Hemisphere, was founded with three key goals in mind.
The first was to stop the spread of Communism, the second to prevent the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and thirdly to encourage European political integration.
The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4 1949 and included the famous Article 5 which promises a commitment to mutual defence: ‘an armed attack against one or more of them… shall be considered an attack against them all’.
Musk is also in support of the US leaving the United Nations.
Back in October 2021 Musk said he was willing to sell $6 billion of Tesla stock if the United Nations official who said that just 2 per cent of the entrepreneur’s income could help solve world hunger could back up the claim.
Musk agreed to fund the $6billion as long as the UN could explain exactly how they would spend the money.
They World Food Programme took Musk at his word and issued a report three days later itemising how the cash would be spent – but the funds never materialised.
Last month Donald Trump described the UN as ‘not being well run’ and called for a review of UNESCO, the UN cultural agency.
