NATO leaders stand by as Trump lectures from his fact-free bubble

The last time Justin Trudeau met the media at an international summit while Donald Trump was aboard Air Force One, the prime minister’s efforts earned him an invitation to “a special place in hell,” by a Trump official.

So, in Brussels Thursday, Trudeau was much more diplomatic in his assessment of the NATO summit but the underlying message was clear — Trump was living in a fact-free bubble.

The NATO show was now a familiar international performance by Trump, the man who rolls into town, sucks all the oxygen from the room, breaks all the crockery, wipes his dirty hands on the clean towels, insult allies, then declares victory and gets out of town.

He turns anodyne photo opportunities into confrontation, he tosses smoke bombs into the room and then he emerges from the carnage to craft his own, self-congratulatory version of what happened.

Declaring victory when there is scant evidence of a win — witness last month’s summit with Kim Jong Un — is a favourite gambit of the U.S. president.

This time, Trudeau and allies got out of the way and let Trump take his victory lap.

At issue was the question of defence spending.

According to Trump, he convinced all NATO members to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. And he gave himself credit for allies agreeing to get to that level more quickly. Everybody in the room thanked him for his incredible leadership, Trump said.

That’s just the start, Trump declared. It won’t be long before everyone is spending 4 per cent, he boasted.

“We are doing numbers like they’ve never seen before,” Trump said.

Specifically asked about Canada, he said it will be up to 2 per cent in a relative “short period of years.”

And then came reality.

Trudeau refused to open his wallet at Trump’s urging.

Canada, Trudeau said, has recommitted to a goal of 2 per cent spending agreed to by Stephen Harper in Wales in 2014, but it is an aspirational target. It won’t be reached any time soon and never will be, at least under Trudeau’s watch, at the current pace.

The Wales commitment is really a Canadian mirage, but the prime minister is not doubling defence spending at Trump’s behest.

Trudeau said ‘no’ before the summit, and repeated that ‘no,’ as it wrapped up.

He was repeatedly queried on the 2 per cent solution and replied that his government was increasing defence investments by 70 per cent over the coming decade.

But while keeping that chequebook closed, pressure from Trump was behind some moves by Trudeau.

He extended Canada’s leadership role of the NATO battle group in Latvia through 2023 and committed 80 new soldiers to join the 450 there. And he announced that Canada will lead a new NATO training mission in Iraq.

Trump is correct that the U.S. is disproportionately doing the financial heavy lifting in NATO and he is also quite correct that, comparatively, countries like Canada are not carrying their weight.

But as angry as that may make him, no one voted for the Liberals in 2015 assuming they would double defence spending.

Trudeau and the Liberals have more pressing domestic concerns and all the hectoring in the world from the U.S. president cannot change that reality.

Upon election, Trudeau ended Canadian involvement in U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq, but he then dispatched about 200 special forces to Iraq in an “advise and assist” role which often morphed into a combat role in all but name.

He prematurely declared Canada “was back’’ and dragged his heels on a promised peacekeeping mission but by next month, as many as 250 Canadian troops will be in Mali, backed by two Chinook and four armed Griffon helicopters in perhaps the most dangerous mission on the planet.

Surely, no one needs a reminder of the price in blood and treasure this country paid in Afghanistan where it fought with distinction and precision.

We have hardly sat on the sidelines. So, score a victory for Trump if he wants, for forcefully putting defence spending on the global agenda and nudging Canada to do a bit more. Let him have his parade.

But nothing changed in Brussels except that with Trump in attendance, once staid summits with their pre-cooked communiqués are now exercises in spin where there is a Donald Trump summit and a real summit and a gulf that cannot be bridged.