Trump’s blunt me$$age to Europe

The US president throws his diplomacy playbook at Nato leaders on his visit to the continent, which includes a rendezvous with Vladamir Putin in Helsinki tomorrow.

WHEN it comes to international diplomacy, President Donald Trump is no milquetoast mumbler. He can be undiplomatically blunt, even rude, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s wrong, said The Chicago Tribune.

Take, for instance, the longstanding dispute between the United States and its Nato allies over how much everyone contributes to the collective defence of Europe.

At the Nato summit in Brussels last week, Trump scorched the sensibilities of Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg and German Chancellor Angela Merkel with this zinger: “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia.”

The Washington Post described Trump’s remarks as “among the harshest in the history of the postWorld War II alliance.” Pass the smelling salts.

Trump also declared: “We have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that’s being paid to the country we’re supposed to be protecting you against,” Trump said, referring to European purchases of Russian natural gas.

Why would he say that? Because it’s true, and to Trump (and many other Americans) it’s galling. Germany, one of the wealthiest countries on Earth, is among more than 20 Nato laggards not yet chipping in 2% of gross domestic product for defence — as these nations pledged to achieve by 2024.

For the past several years, only a handful of Nato members have cleared the 2% bar; the US spends about twice that. This year, however, Nato expects eight of its 29 members to reach 2%.

Great, that only leaves 21 more. Is Trump impatient? Yep. And so was President Barack Obama, and President George W. Bush. US has often demanded that European countries pony up.

Nato is built on the premise that an attack on one member is an attack on every member. That represents an important, and costly, bulwark against security threats, including terrorism and Russian aggression. The Europeans value American security commitments, but apparently not enough to swiftly fork over more cash.

Thus, Trump’s mission is to shame France, Germany and other European countries into finally contributing their due.

“Frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years, back where they’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them,” Trump said.

Trump calling important allies “delinquent”? The president does have a way with words. Technically he’s incorrect, since there’s no money owed to the United States. But the larger point is that the defence of Europe is a shared burden. And candour has its place.

Yet after Trump rattled the contributions cup in Brussels, he joined Nato leaders in approving sweeping plans to boost the alliance’s defences against Russia and terrorism. But he also took a final shot at goading Nato deadbeats. He called for Nato countries to boost military spending to 4% of GDP.

Europe, over to you. Again.

Russia tensions

Some of Nato’s nervous Nellies, meanwhile, fear Trump will rupture the alliance by yielding too much to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the summit tomorrow.

Trump and Putin will sit down together in Helsinki for a day of meetings that US and Russian officials say will touch on every major point of tension between their countries – the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 election, its military incursions into Ukraine and Syria, Moscow’s saber-rattling toward Nato allies and the American economic sanctions intended to punish Russia for its behaviour.

For Putin, it’s a win just to meet one-on-one with the US leader, whose campaign is under investigation back home over whether Trump associates colluded with the Kremlin to help get Trump elected. The upside for Trump is less clear – and that worries some lawmakers and foreign policy experts in Washington, according to Bloomberg.

Trump has indicated that he doesn’t have a list of demands for the Russian president.

“We go into that meeting not looking for so much. We want to find out about Syria. And we will, of course, ask your favourite question about meddling. I will be asking that question again. But we’ll also be talking about other things. We’ll be talking about Ukraine.”

Kremlin and White House officials maintain there’s much to be gained on both sides from the summit.

One possibility is a new nuclear weapons agreement. The New START treaty negotiated under former President Barack Obama will expire in 2021, and both sides would like to extend and possibly expand the accord.

The Russian and American leaders are also likely to discuss how to resolve a dispute over compliance with a 1987 treaty that bans the deployment of intermediate-range missiles on land.

“What would be the ultimate?” Trump said in Brussels. “Well, let’s see. No more nuclear weapons anywhere in the world would be the ultimate, OK? No more wars, no more problems, no more conflict. Let’s find a cure to every disease known to mankind or womankind.”

Putin meanwhile is stepping up efforts to broker a deal for pro-Iranian militias in Syria to withdraw from areas near the border with Israel in favour of government troops. The move could be a way to ease tensions with the US as well as shore up Putin’s ally, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Most of all, the Helsinki summit provides Trump yet another live trial of his sincere belief that he’s uniquely qualified to build relationships and negotiate difficult deals with American adversaries. As with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un, whom Trump met in Singapore in June, the president believes he can generate broad and unprecedented cooperation between the US and Russia despite seemingly intractable differences.

“If you can imagine what reduced tension could do in the case of US-Russia and EuropeRussia, it would be on a much bigger scale,” said US ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman.

“So I wouldn’t underplay at all the importance of actually sitting down for the first time in a meeting and discussing the issues that really matter most.”

That sentiment is shared by the Kremlin. A senior Russian official said both sides were determined to find areas of agreement and that the summit could lay the groundwork for future steps.

But it isn’t clear whether Trump’s desire to reconcile with Putin is driven by a strategic vision or simply by his penchant for contrarian governance.

As he said: “People are telling me I can’t have this meeting, everybody’s saying Russia is the problem – well, I don’t think Russia is the problem. I’m going to show everybody.”