NATO and EU wonder which Trump will turn up
BRUSSELS — Hoping for the best, fearing the worst: EU and NATO leaders are braced for their first meeting with US President Donald Trump on their home turf yesterday.
The trepidation in Brussels, a city Trump once dubbed a dangerous "hellhole," is palpable as he has upended one long-held certainty about US ties after another.
On the campaign trail Trump dubbed NATO – the US-led alliance credited with keeping the peace in Europe for the past 70 years – "obsolete" and unsuited to tackling the real threat of Islamist terror, while he has since accused allies of not paying their way.
As for Europe, he backed Britain's shock Brexit vote, saying the European Union was a would-be superstate doomed to collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
The president has since rowed back at least in part on these positions.
But analysts say that is part of the problem. Which Trump will turn up?
"I think everyone is still asking themselves what is Trump's policy on NATO and the EU," said Markus Kaim of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin.
Adding to the uncertainty, the president is embroiled in a major political scandal over his ties to Russia, having pushed hard for an improvement in relations that the Ukraine crisis plunged into a deep freeze.
Trump meets European Council president Donald Tusk and European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker on Thursday morning.
He then travels to the new futuristic NATO headquarters building on the Brussels outskirts for a meeting of all 28 allies, of which 22 are also EU members.
Tomas Valasek, director of the Carnegie Europe think-tank in Brussels, said that of the two meetings, the one with the EU meeting had the bigger "potential to go bad".