President Trump's continued insistence on angering allies while appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin is leading fellow NATO nations to worry what may emerge from this week's meeting in Brussels.
WaPo:
The heartburn comes ahead of a possible two-headed diplomatic assault from Trump this week. First, he jets to a summit of NATO leaders, where he is expected to continue to complain that Europeans are slacking on defense spending. Days later, he’ll sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin for their first one-on-one summit. European leaders worry that Trump could bargain away their security in the name of better relations with the Kremlin.
European Council President Donald Tusk warned European leaders last month that judging by Trump’s language, allies could no longer assume that NATO will endure.
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“The biggest of the allies doesn’t just have a disagreement with us, but he actually seems willing to walk away,” said Tomas Valasek, a former Slovak ambassador to NATO who runs Carnegie Europe, a Brussels think tank. “Deterrence has already been broken.”
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“It’s one thing if he goes to the G-7 and is rude to people,” a senior NATO diplomat said. “It’s another thing to derail NATO.”
NYT:
Mr. Trump was to arrive in Brussels on Tuesday, the eve of the NATO meeting, at which American presidents are normally viewed as pivotal leaders and consensus builders. But in recent days, Mr. Trump has fumed that the United States is being exploited by Europe and hinted that he might instead play the role of agitator and spoiler, sowing disagreement among allies that would play into Mr. Putin’s hands.
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“If you’re Vladimir Putin, and one of your core goals is to divide the United States from Europe and to show that the NATO alliance is a paper tiger, you’re feeling pretty good right now,” [Derek] Chollet, [the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States,] said.
The president's advisors keep saying he wouldn't destroy the NATO alliance, but Trump himself is saying exactly what he's thinking.
Mr. Trump has dismissed concerns about Mr. Putin as overblown.
He has mocked skeptics who note that the Russian president is a former top official in the K.G.B., the feared intelligence service, by saying, “He’s fine.” Mr. Trump also brushed off concerns that he would be manipulated into offering Mr. Putin concessions, saying he was “totally prepared” for the meeting, which includes a one-on-one session.
Mr. Trump’s advisers have struck a far sharper tone against Russia.
They say that the president is ready to confront Mr. Putin about Russia’s “malign activities,” and that the United States wants a strong and unified NATO. They also have dismissed any suggestion that Washington would consider pulling back its military presence or commitment to the alliance in response to what it considers to be under-spending by member countries.
“The major thing, the major deliverable, the major overall theme of this summit is going to be NATO’s strength and unity,” Kay Bailey Hutchison, the United States ambassador to NATO, said in a conference call with reporters last week.
At least some conservatives are paying attention to the president's anti-NATO rhetoric.
... The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, posted a tweet last week with reminders that appeared designed to speak directly to Mr. Trump on the eve of his trip.
“Things to remember before @realDonaldTrump travels to Europe,” it said. “Russia is the aggressor — Ukraine is the victim. Crimea belongs to Ukraine. NATO & US troops in Europe serve our national interests. Europeans must spend more on defense. Putin’s track record shows he can’t be trusted.”
Apart from his insistence that European allies must increase their defense expenditures, Mr. Trump has taken the opposite stance on nearly every item.
Last month, he suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the Group of 7, from which it was expelled after illegally annexing Crimea.
During a phone call with Mr. Putin in March, when the president was urged by aides not to congratulate the Russian president on his electoral victory, Mr. Trump did just that. He told Mr. Putin that Russia and the United States should get along better. And he commiserated with Mr. Putin over Trump administration officials whom the Russian president said had tried to prevent the call from happening, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.
“Those are stupid people; you shouldn’t listen to them,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Putin, the person said.
One particularly dangerous decision Trump could make would be to recognize Russia's annexation of Crimea.
WaPo:
At last month’s G-7 summit, he suggested that the 2014 annexation was legitimate because most residents of the Crimean Peninsula were Russian-speaking. Leaders pushed back hard but did not feel as though they made headway, according to a person who was in the room at the time.
Recognition of Crimea would undermine the basis of Western action against the Kremlin since 2014, including sanctions and the strengthening of NATO along the Russian border. It would violate U.S. commitments to Ukraine, since Kiev received guarantees in 1994 that Washington would protect its territorial integrity in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up Soviet-era nuclear stockpiles.
And it would be a moral setback to NATO.
NYT:
“In normal times, a president of the United States would rally the allies, develop a unified approach, and go with a strengthened hand to negotiations with the president of Russia, rather than reducing his own leverage,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former deputy secretary general of NATO.
“A bad summit that focuses only on his grievances and complaints is a gift to Putin going into the meeting in Helsinki, where Trump is basically doing Putin’s work for him in dividing the alliance and demoralizing the allies,” said Mr. Vershbow, now a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
Ahead of NATO summit, allies wonder: Will NATO survive Trump? (WaPo)
Trump Poised to Enter NATO Meeting as Wild Card Among Allies (NYT)