NATO WARY OF TRUMP
EU leaders say they no longer have any illusions about US president ahead of meet this week
EUROPEAN leaders say they no longer have any illusions about United States President Donald Trump as they welcome him at a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) summit this week, but fear his “America first” agenda may force a moment of reckoning that works to no one’s benefit.
After searching for stability and familiarity in US foreign policy in Trump’s first year in office, America’s friends in Europe have come to accept the president as an unpredictable political insurgent. But that does not make it any easier to see their own priorities undermined.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned in a recent speech that “old pillars of reliability are crumbling”, in a veiled reference to the US withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, to tariffs on European Union metals exports and the threat of more to come on cars.
On Nato’s old foe, Russia, the administration sent mixed messages by intensifying a US military build-up in Europe, while railing against fellow Nato members on defence spending and failing to coordinate on new sanctions on Moscow last year.
The US president — the de facto leader of the nearly 70-yearold Nato — has indicated what his message will be at the two-day meeting from Wednesday: other governments must dramatically step up military spending and lower import tariffs.
“I’m going to tell Nato: you’ve got to start paying your bills. The United States is not going to take care of everything,” Trump told a rally last week. “They kill us on trade.”
US officials and politicians regularly said Washington spent 70 per cent of its defence budget on Nato, a claim flatly denied in Europe. A senior EU official said the number was more like 15 per cent.
EU officials also contend that EU tariffs on most US imports were already low.
A disastrous Nato summit could provide even worse optics than the divisive Group of Seven meeting last month, especially if a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16 is more convivial, Nato diplomats said.
Wess Mitchell, assistant US secretary of state for European affairs, told diplomats and Nato officials in a recent speech here that Trump was taking a new approach to problems that had festered for years, such as the Middle East peace process, even if it means going it alone.
“In the actions we take, we are hoping to spur a multilateral response to address some of the world’s toughest challenges.”
He was echoing private comments made earlier to senior EU diplomats in Washington DC by Fiona Hill, a top adviser at the US National Security Council.
Hill sought to place Trump’s policy decisions into a coherent whole, they said.
“It came as a shock. We realised Trump cares little for the coordinated US-EU foreign policy of the past,” said a senior diplomat present. “We are stuck without US leadership.”