TRUMP PUSHES NATO COUNTRIES TO DOUBLE DEFENSE SPENDING

BRUSSELS— US President Donald Trump went on a fresh attack against his allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) for their defense spending and trade practices.

Trump pressed a new demand that Nato allies more than double their defense spending at the Nato summit session with non-Nato partners Ukraine and Georgia on Thursday.

But the two countries were asked to leave the room for an unscheduled, allies-only session, two sources told Reuters.

Trump took to Twitter to say publicly what he told Nato leaders privately, that Nato members must meet a 2014 commitment to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense to counter threats to the 29-nation alliance.

4%

“All Nato Nations must meet their 2 percent commitment, and that must ultimately go to 4 percent!” Trump tweeted an hour before the second day of the summit got underway.

Despite the first day’s haranguing of allies for failing to meet spending targets and accusing Germany of being a prisoner to Russian energy, Trump was mild-mannered at a private dinner on Wednesday and avoided any outbursts that many Nato diplomats had feared.

“He was in a good mood, he said Europe was a continent he appreciated,” Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel told reporters.

“We didn’t know what to expect, it was a positive outcome,” he said of the dinner in a Brussels park, where leaders were treated to an acrobatic display and saxophone music.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the summit atmosphere was “much calmer than everyone had said” and he saw a will to maintain the unity of the alliance, while Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic said Trump was “constructive.”

Targeting Germany

While Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has been in Trump’s sights, Britain was keen to make the most of its status as one of the few Nato nations that met the spending target.

“We think President Trump is basically right, that the foundation of a successful alliance is fair contributions by all parties,” said Britain’s new foreign minister Jeremy Hunt.

At the Nato summit, normally a ceremonial affair to cement an alliance that dates back almost seven decades, officials had hoped to limit discussions to strictly military business, especially as deterring Russia is a rare unifying factor after Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea.

Ukraine rising

Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko met Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and spoke at the summit, although his hopes of joining the alliance are, for the time being, thwarted by Russia’s incursion into eastern Ukraine and its support for rebels there.

Under Nato rules, countries with armed conflicts on their territory cannot join the Western alliance.—