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Trump Pulls U-Turn on NATO, Claiming Credit for ‘Stronger’ Pact

Trump Pulls U-Turn on NATO, Claiming Credit for ‘Stronger’ Pact

(Bloomberg) -- From the start of his presidency Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of NATO, especially the unfair burden he says the U.S. has borne for Europe’s defense. On Tuesday he became its surprise champion.

The U.S. president picked a public fight with Emmanuel Macron over what he called the French president’s “dangerous” and “nasty” demands for NATO reform. The two had a tense exchange in London in front of reporters, disagreeing over Turkey’s role in the alliance and whether Islamic State has really been defeated.

The sparring ahead of a summit for NATO’s 70th anniversary reflected new domestic and political calculations for Trump, laboring under the threat of impeachment at home and seeking to protect the proliferation of his brand of conservative nationalism abroad.

Trump Pulls U-Turn on NATO, Claiming Credit for ‘Stronger’ Pact

Trump once questioned whether the U.S. should remain in NATO, and his interactions with allies have been marked by badgering them for their relatively low military spending. But on Tuesday he celebrated the alliance while crediting himself for strengthening it, setting up a plausible claim that NATO’s rising defense budgets validate Trump’s unorthodox approach to foreign policy ahead of his 2020 re-election bid.

“What I’m liking about NATO is that a lot of countries have stepped up, I think, really, at my behest,” Trump said Tuesday in a meeting with Macron. The alliance is “becoming different than it was, much bigger than it was and much stronger than it was.”

Trump may yet backtrack when the formal summit opens on Wednesday in the English countryside. He expressed such severe skepticism of the alliance at the 2018 summit that NATO leaders called an emergency session out of concern the U.S. might bolt.

Although defense spending by America’s NATO allies began to rise before Trump entered the White House in response to Russia’s 2014 aggression in Ukraine, other leaders have been happy to credit Trump’s relentless focus on burden-sharing.

According to NATO data, alliance members other than the U.S. have increased their defense spending by about $130 billion from 2016 to 2020. The U.S. under Trump has also accelerated new commitments of U.S. troops and hardware to Europe, after years of withdrawals, despite the president’s often hostile rhetoric.

Pointing to Success

“He can point at a success,” Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Tuesday of Trump’s push for higher defense spending. Speaking at NATO Engages, a conference on the margins of the leaders’ meeting on Tuesday, Rutte added: “He’s right there, we cannot have the U.S. share all the burden.”

Making that case is particularly crucial as the House impeachment inquiry grinds on at home. The White House is eager to portray the president as hard at work, in contrast with Capitol Hill Democrats that Trump says are distracted by what will ultimately be a futile effort to remove him from office.

On Tuesday the House Intelligence Committee released a report concluding Trump abused his office by pressuring Ukraine’s government to deliver a political favor, then undertook an effort to obscure his conduct and obstruct a congressional investigation.

In more than two hours of remarks to reporters in London on Tuesday, Trump also emphasized his work on trade, describing China as more eager than him for a deal and adding a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that appeared intended to put pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, to hold a vote on Trump’s signature re-write of Nafta.

The president’s decision to avoid upsetting NATO’s apple cart for a third consecutive summit also could be an effort -- though it’s probably not the biggest driver -- to assist its host, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a Trump friend who faces an election just days after the summit concludes.

Trump also now regards NATO as potentially useful in his broader bid to counter China’s economic and strategic influence.

China for the first time will be on the formal agenda at the summit, with the U.S. warning against countries becoming dependent on Chinese infrastructure and credit. The construction of 5G networks in NATO countries by Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co., opposed by the U.S., will be up for discussion.

The French at the very least are wary of taking a strong stance on China within the parameters of NATO. While China might be included in language in NATO statements, it’s not an operational issue for a military alliance, one official said.

Lifting Spirits

Trump’s relatively amiable tone appeared to lift spirits going into a summit that many Europeans had feared could descend into a bitter show of disunion.

“We need to talk about NATO’s future and our common strategic interests – but I’m going into the meeting relatively optimistically,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a side meeting with Macron, Johnson and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Syria.

And while Macron is set to press on with his demands on Wednesday for a rethink of NATO’s remit (he recently called it “brain dead”) it seems his public spat with Trump has not dented their private admiration. Trump gave Macron -- and the Italian prime minister -- a ride to an evening reception. They are two Europeans, along with Johnson, with whom he has struck the biggest personal connection on the world stage.

Still, some old tendencies bled through for Trump. When asked by reporters on Tuesday if the U.S. would come to the defense of NATO members who he had described as “delinquent” on defense spending, the president hinted he’d consider tariffs on imports from countries like Germany that lag the alliance’s goal of spending 2% of gross domestic product on their militaries.

“I’m going to be discussing that today,” Trump said. “It’s a very interesting question, isn’t it?”

--With assistance from Jordan Fabian, Caroline Alexander and Helene Fouquet.

To contact the reporters on this story: Justin Sink in London at jsink1@bloomberg.net;Marc Champion in London at mchampion7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net, Alex Wayne

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