Donald Trump took to the stage in Belgium to crow about how he scored a major foreign relations victory in getting NATO allies to increase their military budgets—by questioning the value of NATO and threatening to leave the vital military alliance. However, other NATO leaders are already disputing Trump’s statements, making his “victory” over NATO appear as illusory as his “agreement” with North Korea.
After two days in which Trump attacked multiple allies, particularly Germany, and denied that NATO had any value to the United States, Thursday morning he suddenly appeared to make an unscheduled speech, where he declared he has solved the problem of NATO.
Trump: Yesterday I let them know that I was extremely unhappy with what was happening … They have substantially upped their commitment and now we’re very happy and have a very, very powerful, very, very strong NATO.
Trump tweeted overnight that NATO countries had to up their military budgets “immediately,” perhaps missing that bit where, in democratic nations, leaders don’t have instant, unchecked power to make such commitments. But where Trump’s appearance at last year’s NATO fiasco could be passed off as Trump simply not understanding how the alliance worked or was financed, that was obviously not the case this time.
Instead, Trump set out to “solve NATO” as he solves every other problem. First create the problem, then pretend it’s fixed. Then accept the applause. In this case, Trump didn’t name any country that had upped its commitment to NATO, or point to any real change that had resulted in NATO now “running like a machine” and being “much stronger than it was two days ago.” However, he did toss on more numbers about how much of Germany was controlled by Russia—all of them simply invented.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that other NATO leaders are already stepping forward to deny they’ve changed their commitment for military spending.
But there were no immediate specifics on what he had achieved, and French President Emmanuel Macron quickly disputed Trump’s claim that NATO allies have agreed to boost defense spending beyond 2 percent of gross domestic product.
As with previous “wins” by Trump, it seems that he’s creating the problem, and the victory, all in the script he’s giving to the press, with no concern with what’s happening in the real world. Even the threats that Trump claims he made about leaving NATO, have been denied by other NATO leaders. As reporters attempted to pin Trump down on these new commitments, the best he could do fumble around with a single digit.
Trump: Some are at two percent. Others have agreed definitely to go to two percent. And some are going back to get the approval and ... which they will get to go to two percent.
The problem with that statement is that every NATO country had already made a commitment to the two percent figure. So Trump was claiming to have forced them to go to … where they already were. The idea that any country had agreed to actually up their commitment seems to exist only in Trump’s mind.
It’s a direct analog to Trump’s visit to Singapore, in which he—after surrendering joint military exercises between the US and South Korea—got Kim Jong Un to sign an agreement that agreed to absolutely nothing he hadn’t agreed to in the past, then returned to the United States bragging that he had solved the North Korean crisis.
And in both cases, Trump claimed to be “tough” in negotiations, but that toughness seems to be limited to outrageous statements made to the press. In private meetings, Trump apparently did not make the statements about potentially leaving NATO that his aides have claimed. In his Thursday morning self-congratulations fest, Trump even declared that other leaders were “thanking him” for putting NATO straight.
“President Trump never at any moment, either in public or in private, threatened to withdraw from NATO,” Macron said.
It’s absolutely Trump’s pattern: Little Rocket Man, Germany is a captive of Russia, NATO is worthless. Then, with no actual change in policy at all: Sleep well, America, NATO is a well-oiled machine, we have a much stronger alliance.
Meanwhile, North Korea has already gone back to building more missiles. And NATO hasn’t changed its military commitment. And Trump is preparing to go run the same show with Vladimir Putin.