‘Genius’ Trump claims Nato victory on defence spending
DonalD Trump declared himself a ‘genius’ yesterday as he secured a huge increase in nato defence spending by apparently threatening to pull out of the alliance.
The US President said he had ‘finetuned’ the organisation and that financial contributions from its 29 members were now ‘going up like a rocket ship’.
It came after he reportedly warned of ‘grave consequences’ and made threats that america may ‘go it alone’ if its allies did not immediately commit to scaling up spending.
His outburst threw the second day of the summit into disarray yesterday morning, forcing nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, to reschedule one meeting and call an allies-only emergency session.
on the opening day of the meeting in Brussels, Mr Trump had demanded that nato double the target for members’ defence spending, from 2 per cent of each nation’s GDP to 4 per cent.
Yesterday, when Mr Trump was asked if he would have been able to pull america out of nato without permission from US congress, he said: ‘ I think I probably can, but that’s unnecessary and the people have stepped up today like they’ve never stepped up before.’
He added: ‘Some are at 2 per cent, others have agreed definitely 2 per cent and some are going back to get the approval which they will get to go to 2 per cent.
‘after 2 per cent we’ll start talking about going higher, but I said ultimately we should be years in advance, we should be at 4 per cent.
‘I think 4 per cent is the right number. now the US, depending on how you calculate it, was at 4.2 per cent, and I said that’s unfair and we have the largest GDP by far, our GDP has gone way up, which means we’re paying for even more which is very unfair.’
according to nato’s latest estimates the US spends $686 billion on defence – the largest of all nato members and more than 3.5 per cent of GDP – compared to Germany’s $46billion, which is little over 1 per cent. only five out of the 29 member countries of the military alliance spend 2 per cent or more of GDP on defence – america, Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland.
as a result, yesterday Mr Stoltenberg gave a Press conference at the closing of the summit praising Mr Trump’s ‘strong leadership’ and said there was a ‘new sense of urgency’.
now, although the 2 per cent target remains, $41billion of new money will be poured into defence spending by the alliagreed ance’s members. In a post- summit press conference, Mr Trump said: ‘What has happened is, presidents over many years ... came in and said “do the best you can” and then left.
‘nobody did anything about it. We had a great meeting in terms of getting along... we have a great relationship, everybody in that room, by the time we left, got along and they to pay more and they agreed to pay it more quickly.’ When asked if he would be performing a U-turn on Twitter after leaving the summit, like he did at the G7 meeting last month, he said he would not be. ‘I’m a very stable genius,’ he said.
Mr Trump added: ‘Yesterday I let them know I was extremely unhappy with what was happening and they have substantially upped their commitment and now we’re very happy and have a very powerful, strong nato, much stronger than it was two days ago.
‘They were probably worried because the US wasn’t being treated fairly, but now we are it has been upped so much.
‘I believe in nato, but the US was paying anywhere from 70 to 90 per cent whatever way you calculate.’
Mr Stoltenberg said there had been ‘frank discussions’ on burden sharing and that ‘all allies have heard President Trump’s message loud and clear.’
He added: ‘In fact since President Trump took office, EU allies and Canada have added an additional $41billion to defence spending and all allies have committed to raise this number substantially.’
‘I was extremely unhappy’