Trump heads to NATO summit as impeachment looms
WASHINGTON – Awkwardness has been the hallmark of President Donald Trump’s meetings with Western allies since he was elected three years ago on a platform that bashed existing treaties, trade deals and alliances.
He left Monday for a two-day summit at a resort in Hertfordshire, 18 miles outside London, with leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the 29-nation military alliance that has been one of his most frequent targets.
He is scheduled to return Wednesday night, hours after the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee holds its first public hearing, the next phase of the impeachment inquiry. Trump’s legal team was invited to attend but declined.
Democrats allege that Trump held up $391 million in promised security aid to Ukraine over the summer in an effort to gain Ukraine’s help for his reelection campaign.
Trump at times has suggested that he blocked the aid because European allies _ the same ones he will be meeting with this week _ were not doing enough to help Kyiv defend itself against Russian aggression.
That explanation came into question after a U.S. diplomat testified in an impeachment hearing last month that the European Union has spent a total of $12 billion to aid Ukraine since Russia invaded in 2014, four times as much as the United States.
Analysts don’t expect NATO allies to publicly confront Trump over Ukraine, which is not a member of the alliance, during the summit.
“It will be a short meeting,” said a European diplomat, who requested anonymity to avoid upsetting Trump. “We won’t go like in a normal summit where the president has many opportunities during many sessions to kind of speak out of the box.”
The summit has a fairly limited agenda in part because allies are eager to avoid any embarrassing conflicts.
“Most of them are trying to keep their head down and let the storm pass,” said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington.
Trump upended the 2018 summit in Brussels, insulting Germany and demanding more defense spending from other allies before leaving to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland, where he publicly disputed U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
The top agenda item this year is a celebration of NATO’S 70th anniversary, which is expected to be relatively muted. Trump will also meet one-on-one with several leaders.
While in London, Trump will attend a reception hosted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
Administration officials announced Friday that Trump would hold bilateral meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He will join a working lunch with the leaders of Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Bulgaria and the United Kingdom.
Trump will also meet with the prime ministers of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, and Italy, Giuseppe Conte. The administration officials said other bilateral meetings might be added, and it was not yet clear whether Trump would speak at a news conference. They seemed to rule out a one-on-one with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan because he and Trump saw each other earlier this month at the White House.
The summit also will unveil changes to NATO’S operating budget. The United States has paid about 22% of the alliance’s $2.5 billion annual administrative budget. That will drop to about 16%, with other countries picking up the slack.