TRUMP AND NATO: ALLIANCE THAT WON COLD WAR FACES DANGER FROM THE CONQUEROR WITHIN
▶ Jens Stoltenberg’s quiet diplomacy could be the key to survival of 70-year pact whose bonds are being tested by a US president, writes Jack Moore in Brussels
Jens Stoltenberg is like the owner of the china shop, looking at the bull on the street outside as it kicks back its legs and prepares to charge. The Nato secretary general, shuttling around the alliance’s new headquarters for meetings, addresses and question and answer sessions (he was scheduled to speak at least five times yesterday), is the organisation’s political self-defence shield. Yet the verbal missiles he is trying to deflect are not coming from the usual quarters in Moscow, but Washington.
US President Donald Trump has launched a daily assault on the majority of his 28 Nato allies in the build-up to the summit in Brussels, accusing them of giving Washington an “unfair deal” and not paying their way in the alliance that stretches from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
The US spends about 3.5 per cent of its GDP on national defence, triple that of Germany and much more than many other European Nato members.
But the alliance has heeded the long-held grievance in Washington, adding about US$40 billion (Dh146.9bn) in additional funds on defence spending in the year leading up to the summit. Mr Stoltenberg has repeated the message that allies are doing more and will continue to do so to save the transatlantic bond. He said it is the biggest spending increase at Nato for a “generation”.
It is the idea that if you keep repeating something, people – in this case, Mr Trump – will begin to believe it. But for Mr Trump, the progress Mr Stoltenberg trumpets is still unsatisfactory. Standing next to the Nato chief, he said the $40bn was still not enough to make American contributions fair for the US taxpayer.
Here in the Belgian capital, the secretary general is in “full reassurance mode”, according to Mathieu Boulegue, research fellow at the UK international affairs think tank Chatham House. “Not for allies but for the alliance itself.”
Nato will turn 70 next year, and to celebrate that anniversary with a transatlantic dispute unresolved would be highly damaging to the alliance’s stature.
“It’s all about ‘we are on the same straight line in terms of unity’,” Mr Boulegue said of the Nato chief’s strategy. “We need that kind of message on that anniversary that we stand united nonetheless. Not because of enemies, but amongst ourselves.”
Twice elected prime minister of Norway and an economist, the man who has led the military alliance since 2014 is known as a champion of pragmatism with a sense of humour to boot. But he has had few laughs at the summit.
When pressed on Mr Trump and his threats aimed at the alliance, particularly that he would defend only members who meet their contribution, Mr Stoltenberg comes up with the same lines – allies are spending more, but need to do more, and a strong Nato is good for Europe and the US, too. At a press conference previewing the summit, he looked a stiff figure, shuffling through notes to ensure he uttered the right words, preventing any irritation of the erratic president before his arrival.
Their body language has said as much as their words. At a White House meeting in May, Mr Stoltenberg sat, legs crossed and his hands clasped on his knee in a polite, friendly manner, almost subservient to the president. Across from him, the American leader sat hunched over, legs wide, hands pointed between them in an aggressive posture.
It has been much the same in Brussels already. As they positioned for a photographers before their breakfast meeting yesterday, the Nato chief smiled as if standing with a friend. Mr Trump looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp, ready to unleash another outburst at any moment. As the pair shook hands at the opening ceremony, Mr Stoltenberg slapped Mr Trump on the shoulder, appearing eager to be pally with the very man who has shaken the foundations of the alliance.
The feeling within Brussels is that Mr Stoltenberg “has done a good job in the lead-up” and Nato “allies are quite satisfied”, according to a senior European Parliament source.
Mr Stoltenberg is so well regarded here that in December last year he secured an extension to his four-year term, which was meant to end this year, until 2020.
But observers said that he has been given the task of presenting the alliance as something it is not – unified.
“Mr Stoltenberg has done his best, but it is a thankless task because in reality, Nato is very far from being united either in its purpose or in its fundamental values,” said Jolyon Howorth, a scholar of the European military and its history.
The alliance leader once admitted that, as an Oslo anti-war activist in the 1970s, he threw rocks at the US embassy to protest against the American campaign in Vietnam. But, now, it is an American who is throwing stones at his establishment.
And, like the new glass walls that surround alliance leaders, there is little the alliance chief has been able to do to stop Mr Trump’s missives smashing the facade of Nato unity.
Mr Stoltenberg has done his best, but it is a thankless task because in reality, Nato is very far from being united JOLYON HOWORTH European military historian