Visiting a city he once called a “hellhole” to meet with the leaders of an alliance he threatened to abandon, US President Donald Trump yesterday was to address a continent still reeling from his election and anxious about his support.
Trump arrived yesterday morning at the EU headquarters in Brussels for meetings with the union’s leaders.
Trump publicly cheered for the dissolution of the body when the UK voted to leave the EU last year.
Photo: AFP
Later in the day, he was slated to attend his first meeting of NATO, the decades-long partnership that has become intrinsic to safeguarding the West, but has been rattled by the new president’s wavering on honoring its bonds.
Trump has mused about pulling out of the pact because he believed other nations were not paying their fair share, and he has so far refused to commit to abiding by Article 5, in which member nations vow to come to each other’s defense.
However, the European capitals that have been shaken by Trump’s doubts might soon find a degree of reassurance.
Trump has shifted gears and has praised NATO’s necessity, while US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Wednesday said that “of course” the US supports Article 5, although Trump still wants other nations to meet their obligation to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense.
“I think you can expect the president to be very tough on them, saying: ‘Look, the US is spending 4 percent. We’re doing a lot,’” Tillerson told reporters on Air Force One.
He also said he thought it would be “a very important step” for NATO to join the 68-nation coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS).
The move, which was expected during yesterday’s meeting, is symbolically important, especially since the terror group on Tuesday claimed responsibility for Monday’s deadly explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
An anti-terror coordinator might also be named, but most changes would be cosmetic, as NATO allies have no intention of going to war against IS.
“It’s totally out of the question for NATO to engage in any combat operations,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday, the eve of the meeting.
The 28 member nations, plus soon-to-join Montenegro, were to renew an old vow to move toward the 2 percent figure for defense by 2024. Only five members currently meet the target: Britain, Estonia, debt-laden Greece, Poland and the US, which spends more on defense than all the other allies combined.
Many are skeptical about this arbitrary bottom line that takes no account of effective military spending where it is needed most, but the leaders were to agree to prepare action plans by the end of the year, plotting how to reach 2 percent over the next seven years and show how they would use the money to contribute troops to NATO operations.
European leaders have been particularly unnerved by Trump’s reticence about NATO due to renewed aggression by Russia, which seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and, intelligence officials believe, interfered in last year’s US elections.
While in Belgium, Trump is to unveil a memorial to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the only time in the alliance’s history that the Article 5 mutual defense pledge has been invoked.
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