The NATO phase of this trip is under his belt (that was not a shot at his gut)………onto the UK and see who he can piss off.
Our president is in Europe to meet with the NATO nations and then a meet and greet with Vlad……the news is full of reports of how the president is undermining NATO with his rhetoric and threats.
Let me say here that the demands being made by Trump are nothing new……almost every president has brought up the spending thing…just not in the media as Trump has done.
Is it possible that the nations of Europe are undermining NATO more than Trump?
To begin with, don’t shoot the messenger because of who he is. Mr Trump’s demands have already been made by previous American leaders, though less bluntly. George W Bush and Barack Obama continuously and politely chided their European allies, asking them to spend more on defence. The former US Secretary for Defence, Robert Gates, even took it upon himself to remind his European partners that future American leaders might become less interested in European defence if they did not step up:
“Indeed, if current trends in the decline of European defence capabilities are not halted and reversed, future US political leaders – those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me – may not consider the return on America’s investment in NATO worth the cost.”
https://capx.co/european-nations-not-trump-are-undermining-nato/
Are the threats just more theatrics from Trump? The optics plays well with his thumb sucking base….
As in a bad marriage, the arguments of US President Donald Trump and his European partners have descended into a sort of ritual exchange. So at this week’s NATO summit, we can be confident that Trump will complain about the lack of European defence spending and threaten to leave Europe if the NATO allies don’t stump up. The Europeans will accept the premise of his argument, point to what they have recently achieved, and pledge to do more.
Rinse and repeat.
The whole affair has the structure of an Apprentice episode. We don’t know what crazy shit Trump will say during the show, but we know how it will end.
http://www.ecfr.eu/article/commentary_trumps_meaningless_nato_spending_debate
This meeting will be worth watching……Trump will be worth watching for he will lie then contradict himself 10 minutes later……so just how strong is this alliance?
Trump started the meeting by being confrontational…….
In a combative start to his NATO visit, President Trump asserted Wednesday that a pipeline project has made Germany “totally controlled” by and “captive to Russia” and blasted NATO allies’ defense spending, opening what was expected to be a fraught summit with a list of grievances involving American allies. Trump, in a testy exchange with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, took issue with the US protecting Germany when the European nation is making deals with Russia. “I have to say, I think it’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia where we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia,” Trump said during a breakfast with Stoltenberg, his first event since arriving in Brussels. “We’re supposed to protect you against Russia but they’re paying billions of dollars to Russia and I think that’s very inappropriate.”
The president appeared to be referring to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring gas from Russia to Germany’s northeastern Baltic coast, bypassing Eastern European nations like Poland and Ukraine and doubling the amount of gas Russia can send directly to Germany, the AP reports. The vast undersea pipeline is opposed by the US and some other EU members, who warn it could give Moscow greater leverage over Western Europe. Trump said that, “Germany, as far as I’m concerned, is captive to Russia” and urged NATO to look into the issue. Trump, who has been accused of being too cozy with Putin—a man accused of US election meddling—
Trump’s biggest bitch is that Germany will buy NatGas from Russia through a pipeline….if they do not buy Russian gas where will they get the resource they need? I think this was a dog whistle for the media and the morns that make up his base. Is this a negotiation technique that he learned at Wharton? I mean after all he keeps telling us all just how smart he is.
Like I said……optics are everything……and this one does not bode well…..but if he was going for theatrics to his supporters back home then this will be a crowning glory……now he has the UK to entertain his base.