United States President Donald Trump made an 180-degree turn with his perspective of NATO during the annual NATO summit in London Dec. 3-4. As with many things involving US politics, transition from critic to fierce support lasted only briefly in what amounted to a series of chaotic, blundering events and statements involving European leaders and their American counterpart. By the time Air Force One landed in Washington, Trump was once again the NATO critic he has always been, this time with an added dose of loathing for certain world leaders.

A Different World

To properly understand why Trump’s views on NATO are so significant – and more importantly, why they were they made headlines last week – it is worth revisiting his previous statements on the alliance. On March 21, 2016, he visited The Washington Post for an unscripted meeting with its editorial board and CNN for a town hall segment. In both cases, the president stressed the unfair financial burden the US bears to support NATO.  He also lamented that the alliance was created for a different world, suggesting that perhaps the alliance is no longer fit for the 21st century. 

“NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country anymore,” Trump said at The Washington Post. “NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO but we’re spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed.” 

He went on to tell his town hall audience that the US should reconsider its participation in the alliance, again by citing the costs compared with other member states.  Less than a week later, he called it “obsolete” in a tweet and he maintained that position throughout the campaign and his presidency. While has kept Washington in the organization since winning the presidency, it is not for lack of trying to remove the US from the agreement. 

White House officials told The New York Times Trump made several attempts in 2018 to withdraw from the organization. In the Oval Office, his now-former advisors, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and National Security Advisor John Bolton, fought him behind the scenes to steer him off that path. The issue never took root as a legitimate policy issue, however, thanks to the combined efforts of White House staff and the demands of other affairs. 

Old, Fat, and Sloppy

This year, the alliance celebrated its 70th birthday, but what would have been an occasion for commemorating the strength of western democracies was overshadowed by Trump’s ego. Whether intentional or not French President Emmanuel Macron baited him into a public feud. 

“What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” Macron said in a Nov. 7 interview with The Economist. “You have no coordination whatsoever of strategic decision-making between the United States and its NATO allies. None.”

That was all it took for Trump to pivot on the alliance. Suddenly, he became its most ardent supporter.

“You just can’t go around making statements like that about NATO. It’s very disrespectful,” Trump said, responding to Macron while ignoring his comments three years ago that “NATO is obsolete, it’s old, it’s fat, it’s sloppy.” 

When the two leaders met in London, they held a joint press conference, which led to some visibly uncomfortable moments between them. After Trump said a majority of ISIS prisoners are from Europe – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom in particular – Macron took a harsher tone and corrected him. Only 2,000 of 10,000 detained insurgents in Syria are from nations outside Iraq and Syria, and only 800 of those are from Europe. 

Mockery

Shortly after Trump and Macron trading barbs, footage leaked of Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte making fun of Trump’s impromptu solo press conference which ran nearly an hour. After seeing the video, Trump called Trudeau “two-faced” and then joked about calling him that. 

Despite Trump proving capable of brushing off the comments, he decided to leave the NATO summit early, cancelling planned closing remarks. On a related note, the US ambassador to Denmark prohibited a US-NATO expert from delivering a speech at a conference in Copenhagen Tuesday. The event was organized by the American embassy and a Danish policy organization, which invited Stanley Sloan to give the keynote speech. 

Sloan has been critical of Trump in the past, but his experience as a former analyst for the US Central Intelligence Agency and visiting scholar at Middlebury College in Vermont has made his observations on NATO relevant to the international community. Ambassador Carla Sands compelled the Danish Atlantic Council to withdraw Sloan’s invitation. The entire conference was consequently cancelled. 

Trump’s views on NATO, whether changed or not, are simply another area of International affairs that his administration is struggling to find its footing in. Macron’s criticism of the lack of US leadership and coordination was arguably justified after Trump gave Turkey the green light to take control of parts of northern Syria. Turkey, while not a NATO member, was an ally and the move was perceived by European NATO members as a betrayal.

L'articolo Trump Can’t Make Up His Mind on NATO proviene da InsideOver.

Non molto tempo fa Donald Trump e Kim Jong Un stavano scambiando di tutto, dagli abusi verbali alle minacce di totale annientamento. Da allora, secondo Trump, le cose sono cambiate. Due vertici e grandi elogi per il dittatore nordcoreano avrebbero dovuto gettare le basi per un trattato che avrebbe garantito la pace per l’Occidente e la prosperità per la Corea del Nord.

A due anni dalle nuove relazioni bilaterali, il tono tra Washington e Pyongyang è cambiato di nuovo. Questa volta in peggio, comunque.

La ragione di ciò, secondo la Corea del Nord? Il presidente Trump non riuscì a trattenersi, ma dovette utilizzare il soprannome che una volta aveva dato a Kim a margine del vertice della NATO a Londra la settimana precedente. Il soprannome, ovviamente, è Rocket Man. Il rapporto di Trump per questo, mentre elaborava in modo così eloquente a Londra: “Sicuramente gli piace sparare missili, giusto?”

La reazione della penisola nordcoreana è arrivata prontamente sotto forma di una dichiarazione del viceministro degli Esteri Choe Son-Hui. E il messaggio era chiaro: se Trump voleva tornare indietro nel tempo e ricominciare l’ostilità che i due paesi si erano scambiati due anni fa o, come diceva Son-Hui, “quando una guerra di parole fu portata attraverso l’oceano , “Trump doveva solo continuare la retorica mostrata al vertice della NATO. Ciò, tuttavia, creerebbe una situazione “molto pericolosa”.

Choe ha aggiunto che qualsiasi insulto contro il Leader supremo di Trump deve essere visto come una ricaduta nella “senilità di un povero”. Inoltre, le parole di Trump avevano scatenato “un’ondata di odio dei nostri cittadini contro gli Stati Uniti”. Se le osservazioni di Trump fossero un provocazione pianificata e non solo un errore verbale, sarebbe considerata come tale e contrastata da una retorica altrettanto dura contro gli Stati Uniti.

Nel frattempo, Trump continua a promettere il disarmo nucleare della Corea del Nord, che a causa del “buon rapporto con Kim” era più che immaginabile. Vedremo cosa accadrà “, concluse Trump, prima di ricordare agli Stati Uniti che avrebbero usato la forza militare se fosse stata necessaria.

L’ambivalenza di queste parole e la dicotomia tra le promesse e il processo attuale hanno di nuovo timore che le tensioni nella disputa sul programma di armi nucleari possano aumentare nuovamente.

I negoziati non sono progrediti dal fallito summit di Trump con Kim in Vietnam a febbraio. Pyongyang aveva fissato unilateralmente una scadenza fino alla fine dell’anno. Fino ad allora, Washington aveva bisogno di mettere sul tavolo nuove proposte. Tuttavia, tali proposte devono ancora apparire.

Il vice ministro degli Esteri Ri Thae Song ha dichiarato che “spetta agli Stati Uniti scegliere quale regalo di Natale ricevere”. Il suo paese non ha più bisogno di “nascondere quali azioni intraprenderà per andare avanti”. Sebbene non abbia menzionato i dettagli, la Corea del Nord potrebbe prendere in considerazione la possibilità di revocare la sua moratoria sui test nucleari e sui test sui missili a lungo raggio.

Solo la settimana precedente, la Corea del Nord aveva condotto un altro test missilistico. In risposta, gli Stati Uniti hanno chiesto la ripresa di “colloqui sostenibili e sostanziali”.

Quando di come questi colloqui saranno facilitati, rimane sconosciuto a questo punto. Tuttavia, con la leva che Trump ha fornito alla Corea del Nord elogiandolo e promettendo la pace, si è manovrato in una posizione in cui qualsiasi cosa, tranne la pacificazione di Kim, potrebbe essere dannosa per la sua campagna di rielezione.

L'articolo North Korea Calls out President Trump proviene da InsideOver.

Donald Trump has been a consistent critic of NATO since his presidency began. At one point he even questioned whether the US should be a member of this alliance. During his first meeting with former British Prime Minister Theresa May, she managed to persuade the president that NATO still has many advantages and she left Washington in January 2017 claiming that Trump is ‘100 percent’ behind the alliance.

Though he may now support the principle behind NATO’s existence, before this week’s summit commemorating 70 years since the alliance was founded, Trump’s vision for the organisation has become clearer since his first meeting with May. He does not oppose US membership of NATO, but he believes that for too long, America has been carrying the burden of increasing its defence spending whilst its allies have failed to do so. This is a point both George W. Bush and Barack Obama once made, but Trump has drilled this point into NATO leaders more so than any of his predecessors.

In June 2018, Trump wrote sharply worded letters to the German, Norwegian and Canadian leaders taking them to task for spending too little on their defence and warning that the US is losing patience with their failure to meet their own security obligations. He felt that many of the NATO states are not fulfilling their commitments made at the 2014 Wales summit to increase their defence spending by two percent. According to Bloomberg, alliance members have upped their military spending by about $130 billion from 2016 to 2020. Though Trump’s NATO rhetoric may appear hostile, he has still accelerated new commitments of American troops and software to Europe. This is despite his argument that the US is carrying the alliance’s burden.

But this week’s summit proved that the president has become a passionate NATO advocate. He picked a public spat with French President Emmanuel Macron for his ‘dangerous’ and ‘nasty’ demands for NATO reform in front of reporters, disagreeing over Turkey’s membership in the alliance and whether Islamic State has really been defeated. He even celebrated the organisation’s existence with other world leaders on Tuesday.

Trump also clarified what he likes about the alliance. He awarded himself credit for NATO members increasing their military budgets. However, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said that the President has been ‘successful’ in urging other nations to increase their military spending and stated that America cannot share the burden on its own. The President’s enthusiasm for the alliance left German Chancellor Angela Merkel feeling optimistic that the summit will not descend into a row.

Though he has always believed in more positive dialogue with Russia, Trump now realises that NATO is useful in countering both Moscow and Beijing, especially as the US warns against Chinese company Huawei building infrastructure in NATO countries. The French are wary of adopting a strong stance against China. This highlights that the problem with the alliance is that many countries disagree with the President’s unorthodox foreign policy.

Two positives have emerged from this week’s meeting; Trump’s support and vision of the alliance is clear, which should reassure many NATO states. Also, the President can return home knowing that many leaders like Rutte agree that he has made a positive case for alliance members to increase their military spending. Though it is clear not all of NATO’s leaders agree with the US’s outlook on issues like China and Iran, the alliance must be preserved as Russia and China continue to display a threat to the alliance’s vital interests. A disunited NATO will only work to Putin’s or Jinping’s advantage. It is refreshing to see politicians rejoice in celebrating the organisation’s 70th birthday.

L'articolo Is Donald Trump’s Vision of NATO Becoming Clearer? proviene da InsideOver.