Trump’s testy, tough talk to NATO on point

Now that the smoke has settled on another week’s news cycle we can take a clear look at President Trump’s confab with our NATO allies.

Yesterday, during a press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May at Chequers, her official country estate outside of London, Trump described that NATO meeting as “testy in the beginning but at the end everybody came together and they agreed to do what they should do.”

It was testy. No president in recent memory has addressed foreign leaders in the tone President Trump did. At times he sounded more like a New York landlord collecting the rent then the leader of the free world.

At the bilateral breakfast he gave it to them straight. “Just look at the chart. Take a look at the chart. It’s public. And many countries are not paying what they should. And, frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money for many years back, where they’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them. So if you go back 10 or 20 years, you’ll just add it all up. It’s massive amounts of money is owed. The United States has paid and stepped up like nobody. This has gone on for decades, by the way. This has gone on for many presidents. But no other president brought it up like I bring it up. So something has to be done.”

He’s right. Nobody has brought it up like he did. Presidents Obama and Bush both emphasized the issue using customary decorum. One gets the feeling that President Trump does not have that much respect for some aspects of customary decorum. To someone who’s operated on the New York concrete, the tenor of it can seem inefficient and unnecessary. He’s big-city raw.

He’s also right on the merits of the argument.

Although members of NATO don’t technically owe the United States money for defense spending it is true that some members are not paying their fair share. In the case of Germany, the recipient of the strongest Trump jab, they are both underpaying for defense against Russia but they’re also entering into a huge energy deal with the Russians in the form of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

“I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia,” Trump said at the breakfast, “Where you’re supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia. So we’re protecting Germany. We’re protecting France. We’re protecting all of these countries. And then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia, where they’re paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia.”

That’s why President Trump declared “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia because it’s getting so much of its energy from Russia.”

Tough talk indeed, but also very much on point.

The president doubled down while standing shoulder to shoulder with the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, saying about the member contributions, “It’s disproportionate and not fair to the taxpayers of the United States and we’re going to make it fair.”

Stoltenberg indicated later that members were indeed planning an increase in contributions and the spirits seemed to be high at the conclusion of the NATO summit.

That would seem to indicate that President Trump got his point across and, though the press predictably howled about the president shattering the world order, in fact he did something beneficial to the United States and ultimately, NATO.

We should be very thankful that the president of the United States is advocating for the citizens of the United States, first and foremost. This is a stark departure from his predecessor, who seemingly brought with him a pocketful of apologies on every foreign trip.

An amicable tone is not as important as effective leadership.