Method in Trump’s brashness

‘Donald Thump’’ is what the Daily Mirror in the UK called him. The headline graced a frontpage account of United States President Donald Trump’s blistering interview about the failures of his British counterpart, Theresa May, and his accusations that London Mayor Sadiq Khan is soft on terrorism. Those were just two of the bombshells.

To see the headlines is to assume that Trump is engaged in the direct opposite of a charm offensive. Which is probably just an offensive. Not for the first time, nor the last, it makes us wonder about Trump’s tactics and strategy. What kind of long-term thinking sits behind his short-term thinking? Is he driven by ideology or instinct?

Do we risk underestimating him by seeing every utterance as part of an Ugly American act?

Before the UK, there was Europe and fraught discussions about Nato. Again, verbal bombs were thrown. One of the more provocative was a claim that Germany is too close to Russia, which did not sit well with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in Soviet-dominated East Germany.

But there is a method to the brashness. Trump owes his presidency to an isolationist line that says the US is too open to the world and has been ripped off by others. Nato, this thinking asserts, is a particularly bad deal. In short, Trump thinks his Nato partners are not paying their share. Nato figures published in The Guardian show the US spends 3.6 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. It has previously called for Nato partners to spend 2 per cent or more, but only four other countries do so: Greece, Estonia, the UK and Poland.

Among the 23 that do not reach the 2 per cent threshold, France spends 1.8 per cent, according to the figures. Germany spends just

1.2 per cent. This is only slightly more than the 1.1 per cent spent by non-Nato country New Zealand.

To put it another way, the US spent more than twice as much on defence in 2015 as all 27 other Nato countries combined, yet the combined GDP of those countries was larger. This explains the logic behind Trump’s ultimatum to Nato: raise spending by January

2019, or the US will go it alone. He has also argued that the 2 per cent commitment, which is met by so few, is already too low. Trump wants to see defence spending lifted to 4 per cent, at which point the world would be awash in weapons.

While Germany is not paying its share, in Trump’s view, it is ‘‘totally controlled by Russia’’ because it relies so heavily on Russian natural gas. This line emerged in a discussion with Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg that has been called ‘‘a fiery oncamera exchange that was among the harshest in the history of the post-World War II alliance’’.

But is Trump trying to blow up Nato, or is he just playing hardball? It is probably the latter. He also owes his presidency to an image as a tough negotiator who can cut a good deal.

Nor is he the first US politician to make such claims about Nato. Even Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton agreed other countries should pay more. But they would have been much less bold about it.