FIRST came the fiasco of the G7’s summit last month in Charlevoix, Canada, when President Donald Trump refused to sign the final communiqué amid angry tweets from Air Force One. Now for the sequel. Many fear an even more damaging bust-up at the NATO summit to be held in the 29-member alliance’s new headquarters in Brussels on July 11th-12th. It features the same lead characters. “We’ve seen that movie and it didn’t end well,” says Admiral James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a former supreme allied commander Europe.
Although as president Mr Trump has affirmed his commitment to the alliance, some suspect his support is at best skin-deep. On the campaign trail he described NATO as “obsolete” and at Charlevoix he is said to have called it “as bad as NAFTA”, a trade agreement he regards as a rip-off. The president resents his allies for failing to bear their fair share of the costs of defending Europe. Never mind that some of them put their soldiers in...Continue reading
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