Body language speaks to frosty relations

He didn’t shove anyone this time, but President Donald Trump’s body language during NATO events Wednesday in Brussels suggested his relationships with key U.S. allies aren’t exactly buddy-buddy.

Trump started the day with a tense breakfast meeting with Jens Stolten- berg in which he lectured the NATO leader about member defense spending and complained about a German pipeline deal with Russia. Arms crossed over his chest, Trump gestured at Stoltenberg and repeatedly interrupted the secretary-general as he argued his case.

Trump’s aides seated around the table, including chief of staff John Kelly and the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, looked visibly uncomfortable at points.

Their subsequent encounters at NATO headquarters were formal and less strained as they twice shook hands and chatted in front of journalists. But those moments were more perfunctory than Stoltenberg’s chattier introductions with other leaders, many of whom Stoltenberg was seeing for the first time that day after he had spent part of the morning hosting Trump.

World leader summits are largely about optics and presenting a united front to the rest of the world. But Trump barreled into his second NATO summit, as he did his first, with a litany of public complaints about alliance members’ “delinquent” defense spending, as well as a German-Russian gas pipeline deal.