Trump warning for nations that do not pay their way on defence
President will use summit to make ‘tough’ demands on Nato members falling short of spending targets
PRESIDENT Donald Trump will make “very tough” demands on Nato member states to increase their military spending levels at a special leaders’ summit in Brussels today, the White House warned last night.
The US president may have backtracked on his campaign claim that Nato was “obsolete”, but he continues to demand that European members of Nato – particularly Germany – meet the alliance’s commitment to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence.
Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, said that Mr Trump would not pull his punches when he met with heads of government at Nato’s new €1 billion (£865 million) headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels.
“You can expect the president to be very tough on them, saying, ‘Look, the US is spending four per cent. We’re doing a lot. The American people are doing a lot for your security, for our joint security. You need to make sure you’re doing your share as well.’”
Only the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia and Greece met the Nato spending target in 2016, with Washington paying around 70 per cent of all Nato spending. Germany, the richest economy in Europe, spends just 1.2 per cent of GDP on defence.
Under pressure from Washington, Nato members have committed to hitting the two per cent of GDP spending target by 2024, with an additional $10billion (£7.75billion) spent in 2016, but questions remain in the US over how much military capability the new spending will deliver.
Mr Trump will be feted at the summit, which will feature a fly-past of Nato jets and the unveiling of a memorial to the September 11 attacks.
Last-minute negotiations also avoided a potentially damaging diplomatic showdown with Mr Trump after France and Germany reluctantly agreed to US demands for Nato to take a formal role in the war against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). France and Germany have led the resistance to US demands, fearing that the alliance will be sucked into a grinding campaign in the Middle East and could be stuck with a long-lasting responsibility for security in Iraq.
All 28 Nato members already take part in the international coalition on an individual basis, but Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato secretary-general, said the decision for the organisation to join formally was an important symbolic step.
“[Nato membership of the coalition would] send a strong and clear message of unity in the fight against terrorism and, in light of the attack in Manchester, it’s important that we send this clear message that we are united in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
Senior EU diplomats tried to play down the concession, dismissing it as “a symbolic gesture” for Mr Trump’s benefit. Christophe Castaner, the French government spokesman, said that President Emmanuel Macron
‘The American people are doing a lot for your security. You need to make sure you’re doing your share as well’
would make it clear to Mr Trump that France would not allow Nato to become “the sole strike force against Isil”.
The strained diplomatic undertones come as leading analysts warned that the Trump presidency presents a unique threat to Nato.
Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak ambassador to Nato and now head of the Carnegie Europe think tank, argued in a recent policy paper that Mr Trump represented a “dramatically different” view of Nato than European members had seen before.
“Trump has challenged the idea that active engagement in Europe is a core US interest. He appears to regard all foreign relations as zero-sum transactions, in which each contribution to someone else’s security represents a net loss to the United States,” he wrote. UUS spies learned last summer that Russian officials discussed influencing Mr Trump through his advisers Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, The New York Times reported last night, citing three current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence.