Just this month, the US president left a G7 summit in Canada dramatically early to return to Washington to discuss strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, proceeded with military action within five days, and then promptly brokered a ceasefire agreement in an attempt to end hostilities. He arrived at the NATO summit arguing that the mutual defense pact at the heart of the alliance was “open to interpretation,” causing a level of panic among some delegations.
America’s transatlantic allies had reason to be concerned ahead of a NATO summit in The Hague this week. After a manic few days about US foreign policy that included US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, the US president seemed in no mood for pleasant words. As he left the White House for the Netherlands, his frustration with the state of negotiations with Israel and Iran turned to harsh words. “We basically have two countries that have fought so long and so hard that they don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump told reporters. However, the president defied concerns at the summit, allowing the pact that has underpinned European security since the dawn of the Cold War to live on.
“When I was around that table, it was a good group of people,” Trump said during his closing press conference in The Hague.
“It’s not a scam. And we’re here to help them defend [their] countries,” he said. Trump was pleased that he had finally secured pledges from almost all NATO members to significantly increase their defense spending, an issue he has been berating and threatening them about since the beginning of his first term. His spirits were also lifted by the heavy dose of flattery he received from Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister and NATO’s new head, including on the Iran operation. But the NATO friendship was so hard-won that it highlighted how caught up the world is in the whims of the man in the White House and the noisy, erratic tactics of Trump’s foreign policy.
Just this month, the US president left a G7 summit in Canada dramatically early to return to Washington to discuss strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, proceeded with military action within five days, and then promptly brokered a ceasefire agreement in an attempt to end hostilities.
He arrived at the NATO summit arguing that the mutual defense pact at the heart of the alliance was “open to interpretation,” causing a level of panic among some delegations. But Trump said little more to undermine the alliance in the Netherlands. Both internationally and domestically, officials and investors are struggling to understand whether he is an interloper or a peacemaker, or whether there is some guiding theory for his actions and rhetoric. The president appears to display no “particular ideological agenda” other than self-interest, says Julian Zelizer, a professor of political history at Princeton University. “When he sees an opportunity for himself and his power, he seizes it.”
Foreign capitals are also trying to calculate whether resistance to Trump might be the best option to protect their economies and interests despite the obvious risks, or whether tacit acceptance might be the safest bet.
But at some point, everyone knows they will have to deal with Trump’s fluctuations and often irritable demands, sometimes broadcast via social media. “The essence of Trump’s foreign policy is unpredictability,” says Ray Takeyh, a former senior State Department adviser on Iran who is now at the Council on Foreign Relations. “It doesn’t matter much whether he’s internationalist, restrictive or isolationist. He’s going to do what he wants, and everyone else has to adapt.” Trump’s decision to order airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend was still very much on his mind when he arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the NATO summit. The US president and his top national security advisers had managed to broker a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran on the eve of his trip, allaying some fears of regional escalation and a flare-up in the Middle East.
“We think it’s over. I don’t think they’re going to retaliate against each other,” Trump said in the Netherlands. “We’ve also reaffirmed the credibility of American deterrence, which is like no other,” he added.
But as the diplomatic and military shockwaves from the US airstrikes were still reverberating around the world, and the president even mentioned the possibility of “regime change” in Tehran, he quickly defended himself over revelations that an initial assessment by military intelligence found that the airstrikes had set back Iran’s nuclear program by only months, not years. Trump was quick to dismiss the conclusions, which contradicted his claim that the nuclear facilities had been “disappeared,” and then proceeded to attack the media, including CNN and the New York Times, which first reported the findings. “For Trump, the Hague summit was about two things: a ‘Victory in Europe’ Day on defense spending and a fight with the US media over the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons.” “A clear agenda,” says Joel Linnainmäki, a research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a think tank.
“He focused mainly on the latter. Trump’s main foreign policy concern is how things look for his base at home.”
But the anger overshadowed another shift in Trump’s Iran policy: following the ceasefire, the US said it was ready to resume negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear program as early as next week – which could potentially lead to an easing of sanctions on the country.
Even Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, who is a close Trump ally, seemed uneasy about the possibility. “I don’t want people to think the problem is over, because it’s not,” he told reporters. Yet despite the blowback, many Republicans believe Trump’s Iran strategy has been successful so far. “We may have created the conditions for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and time will tell,” says Heather Nauert, a former State Department official in Trump’s first term. “But we’ve gotten them to a place where they’re willing to sit down and have what I hope will be a serious conversation about the future of their country.”
But to White House critics, it all seemed haphazard. “The administration seems to be making it up all the time, with senior officials never knowing from one minute to the next whether what they say or do will be undermined by a presidential tweet,” says Jim Townsend, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy.
A successful NATO summit was hardly a foregone conclusion. Beyond Trump’s questioning of Article 5, the mutual defense treaty, allies were bracing for the potential fallout from Trump’s last-minute renegotiation of Spain’s soon-to-be-adopted 5 percent of GDP defense spending target, which threatened to derail the whole thing. “Spain is not complying, which is very unfair to the rest of them,” Trump said aboard Air Force One. As Trump dined with the king and queen of the Netherlands and other world leaders on Tuesday night, officials, diplomats and security experts at parties and events on the sidelines of the summit were bracing for how badly the next day would go.
Europeans “must do “everything we can to keep the US” on board, even if that means “dancing like monkeys” for Trump, a foreign policy adviser to a NATO member government said.
Praise from Rutte, who even called Trump “father” during a bilateral meeting, helped him win his support. “Donald, you have brought us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” Rutte wrote in a text message to the president, who later posted it on TruthSocial. “You will achieve something that NO American president in decades has been able to do.” In the end, the Hague summit declaration sanctioned a commitment by NATO members to spend 5 percent on defense by 2035, citing “the long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security and the ongoing threat of terrorism.” General David Petraeus, who led several U.S. military campaigns in the Middle East, told CNN this week that Trump’s “angry man theory” of diplomacy appears to be working.
“I think he’s done that very effectively. He’s expressed his displeasure repeatedly. They’ve clearly taken it very seriously. There’s been a lot of soul-searching in Europe… They’re very concerned about [Trump’s] response and they’ve taken action as a result, and that’s good to see,” he said.
However, Spain remained stubborn in its refusal to meet the defense spending target. The US president showed no mercy to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during his press conference, insisting he could punish Madrid on trade for not complying with it, as the US and EU try to reach a deal.
“We are negotiating with Spain on a trade deal. ‘We are going to make them pay twice as much, and I am serious about it,’” Trump said. Trade is likely to shift national security to Trump’s attention in the coming weeks, as a July 9 deadline looms for many of America’s trading partners to reach a deal or face higher tariffs. After a sharp stock market drop and even a Treasury sell-off following the president’s “liberation day” tax hikes on a number of countries, Trump is under pressure to extend the deadline or reach deals to avoid higher tariffs.
In addition, the success of Trump’s major geopolitical ventures will be measured by their long-term sustainability. “The attack on Iran appears to have succeeded, and NATO allies are committed to paying more,” says Takeyh. “The key question is whether these triumphs are short-lived. If Iran now secretly develops a bomb and the alliance breaks up over burden-sharing issues, then that is a more problematic thing.” (Financial Times)
