Donald Trump unleashed his fury at America’s closest allies even before the NATO summit—assembling leaders from twenty-nine countries on both sides of the Atlantic—began on Wednesday. By the time the tumultuous two-day summit was over, the future of the world’s most powerful military alliance seemed uncertain. So, too, did the global order of the twenty-first century, given the dizzying array of disagreements that have erupted in the West over the past eighteen months on security, trade, nuclear proliferation, immigration, climate change, and regional relations. The tensions between the United States and its NATO partners were all the more worrisome after the G-7 summit—of the world’s most powerful economic alliances—in Quebec last month. Trump left early, withdrew U.S. agreement from a joint communique on goals, and insulted the host, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, on Twitter.
Trump’s attitude toward traditional alliances of any ilk now seems ambivalent at best. He is usually demanding, often angry, and increasingly even dismissive—all with consequences that scare decades-old allies. “Trump at NATO Summit: It’s not just bad, it’s catastrophic,” a headline in Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung declared on Wednesday.
In Brussels, the President’s focus in public statements was not on major threats facing the United States or Europe—not even on the death this month of a British woman exposed to Novichok, a chemical weapon developed by the Soviet Union. (It was the first known offensive use of such a chemical weapon since the Second World War.) The rupture deepened, instead, over money. At breakfast with the NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, Trump went on a tirade about Germany, a country on the front lines of NATO’s mission for more than four decades. He called it a “captive of Russia,” because of “very sad” and “inappropriate” energy deals with Moscow facilitated by the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project. “It certainly doesn’t seem to make sense that they paid billions of dollars to Russia, and now we have to defend them against Russia,” the President said, in front of television cameras.
Traditionally, the trade patterns or energy needs of individual NATO members have been honored as separate issues or sovereign decisions. No longer. Trump seemed to find no irony in the fact that, after criticizing German ties with Russia, he is headed to Helsinki, on Monday, for talks with President Vladimir Putin, to better U.S. relations with Russia.
Some of Trump’s team at the table, most notably the chief of staff, John Kelly, seemed to flinch after Trump charged that Germany was “totally controlled” by Russia. Kelly was caught on camera grimacing and turning his head. The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, later told the Washington Post that Kelly was “displeased because he was expecting a full breakfast, and there were only pastries and cheese.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, noted later in the day that she had grown up in Communist East Germany during the Cold War—Putin was later a K.G.B. intelligence officer stationed there—implying that she knows far more than Trump does about what it means to be captive to Moscow. “I’ve experienced, myself, a part of Germany controlled by the Soviet Union,” she said. “I’m very happy today that we are united in freedom as the Federal Republic of Germany and can thus say that we can determine our own policies and make our own decisions.”
Trump met later with Merkel one-on-one. After the meeting, Trump boasted, again in front of television cameras, that the two leaders had a “very, very good relationship.” Merkel, a famously stoic leader who has been in power for almost thirteen years, said she hoped that Germany and the United States would “continue to coöperate.”
Behind closed doors, Trump also stunned allies by asking them to double their defense-spending target—from two per cent to four per cent of the national G.D.P. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had pressed European allies to increase their defense budgets. Under an agreement negotiated during the Obama Administration, after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, in 2014, NATO allies pledged to increase defense spending to two per cent of their G.D.P. by 2024. In Brussels, Trump said that they should do it now—and then commit to twice as much. That is an unrealistic demand for some floundering European economies—today or anytime in the near future. Only five of the twenty-nine NATO members currently meet the two-per-cent target that is still six years away: the U.S. spends 3.6 per cent, Greece 2.2 per cent, Estonia 2.14 per cent, Britain 2.1 per cent, and Poland 2 per cent. France allocates 1.8 per cent and Germany 1.2 per cent.
Trump left the session with heads of state shortly after making the demand. Then, before the group dinner, Trump tweeted that all NATO members must get to two per cent “IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025.”
On Thursday, Trump turned what was expected to be a final routine group meeting into a quarrelsome emergency session over NATO spending. At one point, Trump threatened that the United States would go it alone if allies didn’t ante up more money by January, according to press reports. The President agreed to sign onto a final communique, which reaffirmed NATO’s broad goals. He then declared the outcome of the summit a personal triumph.
“The United States was not being treated fairly, but now we are,” Trump said at a final news conference. NATO members will cough up an additional thirty-three billion dollars, he said, although it was unclear whether any of that was new funding or money due under past pledges. “We made a tremendous amount of progress,” Trump declared. “I believe in NATO.” He even said that the final session exuded a “very collegial spirit in that room.” NATO, Trump said, is a “fine-tuned machine.” His statements did little to change nervousness about the alliance’s future.
Trump’s attack on NATO differs starkly from the views of members of his own party. The day before the summit, the Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan resolution—ninety-seven to two—supporting NATO. It called on the Administration to “urgently prioritize the completion of a comprehensive, whole-of-government strategy to counter malign activities of Russia” that undermine democracies worldwide.
“A strong NATO, especially given a level of aggression from Russia not seen since the Cold War, remains essential for maintaining the rules-based international order created with U.S. leadership that has helped democracy thrive around the world and has made our citizens safer at home,” Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.
The former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute, a retired Army general who coördinated war policy at the National Security Council under both the George W. Bush and Obama Administrations, called Trump’s claims about NATO “bogus.” “Trump’s dismissal of organizations like NATO—but also the World Trade Organization and European Union—is because he views them all as having cheated America. He’s made American the victim in a way that is not true, not accurate,” he told me.
“He misses the fact that we created and led NATO for seventy years not because of some misguided generosity but, rather, because of steely-eyed self-interest. It’s a good deal for us militarily because it provides twenty-eight partners that train together, operate together and pledge to defend one another. Economically, the U.S. and NATO allies make up almost half of the global G.D.P. Then politically, NATO is twenty-nine democracies founded on common values,” Lute, now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center, told me. “So the basic question is, Is American better off with this team or better off handling any crisis it has to confront by itself? With all his histrionics, he misses why this is not a bad deal for us, that we’re not being cheated.”
The President seems well aware that he has alienated key Western allies—to the point of being a pariah. Before the breakfast meeting on Wednesday, Trump startled the NATO Secretary-General by claiming that “because of me” NATO “raised about forty billion dollars over the last year.” Referring to himself in the third person, the President said, “I think the Secretary-General likes Trump. He may be the only one, but that’s O.K. with me.”
The President’s comment came a day after the European Council President, Donald Tusk, publicly rebuked Trump. “Dear America, appreciate your allies; after all, you don’t have that many,” he said. Europe spends many times more than Moscow and nearly as much as Beijing on defense—and in ways that represent an investment in U.S. security too, the former Polish Prime Minister added. For seventeen years, America’s allies in NATO have fought shoulder-to-shoulder in Afghanistan, losing eight hundred and seventy troops. “Dear Mr. President, please remember about this tomorrow when we meet at the NATO summit, but above all when you meet Putin in Helsinki. It is always worth knowing who is your strategic friend—and who is your strategic problem,” Tusk said.
Trump left the NATO summit for a long-deferred visit to Britain, where he will meet Prime Minister Theresa May and Queen Elizabeth. The timing could not be worse. May is embroiled in a government crisis over the terms of Brexit, which has been further complicated by the resignation of two cabinet ministers, including the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, who is friendly with Trump. The crisis will limit May’s ability to negotiate a new bilateral trade deal with the United States—or have anything to show from the visit.
Trump faces large protests in Britain, including a large blimp balloon complete with a blond coif mimicking the President’s wavy hair. Shortly before taking off for Britain, the President told reporters that he was “fine” with the demonstrations because people “like me a lot” there. He blamed the protests on Britain’s own political turmoil. When Trump and the First Lady arrived at Winfield House, in London, where they are staying on Thursday night, the Beatles song “We Can Work It Out” was heard playing outside, according to pool reporters.
The President is then scheduled to have a golfing weekend in Scotland, before flying to Helsinki for his historic summit, on Monday, with Putin, which Trump told reporters on Thursday would be a “just a loose meeting.” NATO allies have been concerned that he will be too flexible on issues that are existential for some European nations, notably the three Baltic states once claimed by Russia, and more accommodating with Putin than he had been with them at either the G-7 or NATO summits.
At his final press conference on Thursday, Trump said that Putin has always been “very nice to me” and that the two leaders “got along well” in the past. “Hopefully,” he added, “someday maybe he’ll be a friend.” On election meddling, Trump appeared nonplussed about changing Russia’s behavior. “He may deny it,” the President acknowledged. “All I can do is say, ‘Did you?’ and ‘Don’t do it again.’ ” Whatever happens, it’s likely to be a week that all countries involved will remember, as much for Trump’s undiplomatic style as for his diplomatic initiatives.
