Europe-US | Trump back at NATO after rattling allies, condemning Germany

President Donald Trump with (from left) Greek PM Alexis Tsipras, Portuguese PM Antonio Costa and Hungarian PM Viktor Orban

President Donald Trump renewed his pressure tactics on fellow NATO nations to increase their defense spending yesterday, hammering U.S. allies on Twitter as he attended a second day of meetings with leaders of the military alliance.

Trump, in a series of tweets from Brussels, said that, “Presidents have been trying unsuccessfully for years to get Germany and other rich NATO Nations to pay more toward their protection from Russia.”

He complained the United States “pays tens of Billions of Dollars too much to subsidize Europe” and demanded that member nations meet their pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, which “must ultimately go to 4%!”

Trump has taken an aggressive tone during the NATO summit, questioning the value of an alliance that has defined decades of American foreign policy, torching an ally and proposing a massive increase in European defense spending.

Under fire for his warm embrace of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Trump on Wednesday turned a harsh spotlight on Germany’s own ties to Russia, alleging that a natural gas pipeline venture with Moscow has left Angela Merkel’s government “totally controlled” and “captive” to Russia.

He continued the attack yesterday, complaining that, “Germany just started paying Russia, the country they want protection from, Billions of Dollars for their Energy needs coming out of a new pipeline from Russia.”

“Not acceptable!” he railed before arriving late at NATO headquarters for a morning of meetings that will include talks with the leaders of Azerbaijan, Romania, Ukraine and Georgia. In the afternoon, he heads to his next stop: the United Kingdom.

Peter Navarro, director of the White House National Trade Council, echoed Trump’s rhetoric, telling Fox Business Network that “Germany is a tremendous problem, both for Europe itself, and for the United States in this sense.”

“What’s more surprising, the fact that the President Trump is calling them out on that or that previous presidents haven’t?” he asked. “It’s really extraordinary that Donald Trump has to be the person to point out that the emperor in Europe has no clothes.”

The tough rhetoric against a core ally comes just days before Trump is set to meet one-on-one with Putin in Finland.

With scorching language, Trump questioned the necessity of the alliance that formed a bulwark against Soviet aggression, tweeting after a day of contentious meetings: “What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy?”

During the meetings, he demanded via tweet that NATO countries “Must pay 2% of GDP IMMEDIATELY, not by 2025” and then rattled them further by privately suggesting member nations should spend 4 percent of their gross domestic product on defense — a bigger share than even the United States currently pays, according to NATO statistics.

It was the most recent in a series of demands and insults that critics fear will undermine a decades-old alliance launched to counterbalance Soviet aggressions. And it comes just days before Trump sits down with Putin at the conclusion of his closely watched European trip. AP