Donald Trump’s European tour is leaving a trail of wreckage, as America’s allies are left bruised and confused by his shambolic handling of the NATO summit and fearful of his forthcoming meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Trump came to the NATO summit with one single and simple message — to urge NATO members to honour their promise to spend more on defence rather than rely so heavily on the United States.
It is a fair demand. Only 8 of the 29 NATO members are on track to meet pledges of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence this year.
The Obama administration in 2014 convinced NATO countries to set a goal of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence within 10 years.
Since he took office Trump has further stepped up this pressure on NATO demanding that its members move faster to lift defence spending.
In fact they have, so it would have been easy for Trump to diplomatically claim some success at the summit while urging continued action.
Instead, the president charged into the summit like an angry bull, making threats, hurling abuse and making false claims. And this was to America’s closest allies.
Trump publicly complained about NATO members not spending 2 per cent of their GDP and then in the meetings abruptly insisted that they all lift their defence spending to 4 per cent of GDP.
This was patently unrealistic — even the US, the world’s biggest military spender, spends only 3.6 per cent.
Then Trump, behind closed doors, created “utter panic’’ among NATO allies by making comments which were interpreted by some as suggesting with US might withdraw from NATO.
Trump did not make a direct threat to withdraw but apparently grumbled that the US could potentially “go it alone’’ — a comment which was seen by some as a threat.
Then Trump abruptly turned around and said “I believe in NATO,” claiming that his hard line stance had persuaded America’s allies to lift their defence spending to “levels never thought of before’’.
He said he deserved “total credit’’ for the historic breakthrough.
But there was no breakthrough and there were no new decisions to lift spending.
Within hours French president Emmanuel Macron publicly denied Trump’s claim, as did Italy’s prime minister Giuseppe Conte.
They said all NATO had done was to reaffirm its 2014 commitment to lift spending to 2 per cent of GDP.
Along the way Trump delivered a bizarre broadside to Germany for being “captive to Russia’’ for approving a second natural gas pipeline to Russia.
So by the time Trump departed the summit for Britain early today he achieved nothing beyond sowing uncertainty among America’s European allies about his commitment to Europe.
At the same time he said he was looking forward to his meeting with Putin — a leader whose behaviour in Crimea and East Ukraine is the very reason why Europe still needs NATO.
Trump is not always inept on the world stage, but he was this week. NATO was his worst international performance as president.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia.
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