Trump meets wary Nato and EU in ‘hellhole’
Alliance set to join anti-IS coalition
Visiting a city he once called a “hellhole” to meet with the leaders of one alliance he threatened to abandon and another whose weakening he cheered, President Donald Trump was to address a continent yesterday still reeling from his election and anxious about his support. Mr Trump travelled yesterday morning to the European Union headquarters in Brussels for meetings with Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, JeanClaude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and other EU officials. Mr Trump appeared to be greeted warmly by the leaders, despite his past comments publicly cheering the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU last summer and slamming the alliance during his transition as “a vehicle for Germany”. Mr Trump has taken a less combative tone since taking office, praising the alliance as “wonderful” and saying a strong Europe is very important to him and the United States. After meeting with Mr Trump yesterday at the EU, European Council president Donald Tusk said he and the US precedent agreed on the need to combat terrorism but some differences loomed large. “Some issues remain open, like climate and trade. And I am not 100 percent sure that we can say today — we means Mr President and myself — that we have a common position, common opinions about Russia,” said Mr Tusk, who said unity needed to be found around values like freedom and human rights and dignity. “The greatest task today is the consolidation of the whole free world around those values.” Later in the day, Mr Trump was to meet with France’s new president and attend his first meeting of Nato, the decades-long partnership that has become intrinsic to safeguarding the West but has been rattled by the new president’s wavering on honouring its bonds. Mr Trump has mused about pulling out of the pact because he believed other countries were not paying their fair share and he has so far refused to commit to abiding by Article 5, in which member nations vow to come to each other’s defence.
But the European capitals that have been shaken by Mr Trump’s doubts may soon find a degree of reassurance. Just like his position on the EU, the president has recently shifted gears, praising Nato’s necessity. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Wednesday that “of course” the United States supports Article 5, though Mr Trump still wants other nations to meet their obligation to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defence.
“I think you can expect the president to be very tough on them, saying, ‘Look the US is spending four percent. We’re doing a lot,’” Mr Tillerson told reporters on Air Force
One. He also said he thought it would be “a very important step” for Nato to join the 68-nation international coalition fighting the Islamic State.
Mr Stoltenbeg affirmed yesterday that the alliance will join the international coalition fighting the IS group but will not wage direct war against the extremists. He said joining the coalition “will send a strong political message of Nato’s commitment to the fight against terrorism and also improve our coordination within the coalition” but he underlined that “it does not mean that Nato will engage in combat operations”. British Prime Minister Theresa May said she planned to raise the issue with Mr Trump over whether the British can trust America with intelligence following a series of leaks on the Manchester bombing investigation blamed on US officials. She said she planned to “make clear to President Trump that intelligence that is shared between our law enforcement agencies must remain secure”. The 28 member nations, plus soon-tojoin Montenegro, will renew an old vow to move toward the 2% figure for defence by 2024. Only five members currently meet the target: Britain, Estonia, debt-laden Greece, Poland and the US, which spends more on defence than all the other allies combined. Many are sceptical about this arbitrary bottom line that takes no account of effective military spending where it’s needed most. But putting some meat on the pledge, the leaders will agree to prepare action plans by the end of the year, plotting how to reach 2% over the next seven years. European leaders have been particularly unnerved by Mr Trump’s reticence about Nato due to renewed aggression by Russia, which seized Crimea from the Ukraine in 2014 and, intelligence officials believe, interfered in last year’s American elections. While in Belgium, Mr Trump was to unveil a memorial to the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001, the only time in the alliance’s history that the Article 5 mutual defence pledge has been invoked. He was also to speak at Nato’s gleaming new $1.2 billion headquarters. In total, Trump will spend about 24 hours in Brussels, a city where he said making a home would be “like living in a hellhole” because of Muslim immigration and terror threats. Brussels is the fourth stop on Mr Trump’s nine-day international trip, the first such trip of his presidency. Protests were slated to take place outside the heavily guarded security perimeter near the city’s airport and downtown. Belgium remains on security Level 3 — meaning the threat of an extremist attack “is possible and likely”.