Trump Says Germany Is ‘Captive’ to Russia: Live NATO Updates
Getting ready to leave for Europe. First meeting - NATO. The U.S. is spending many times more than any other country in order to protect them. Not fair to the U.S. taxpayer. On top of that we lose $151 Billion on Trade with the European Union. Charge us big Tariffs (& Barriers)!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 10, 2018
Right Now: Chancellor Angela Merkel rejected President Trump’s claims about Germany.
• President Trump is in Brussels as part of a seven-day, three-nation European trip that highlights the ways he has utterly transformed United States foreign policy.
• Mr. Trump has disparaged NATO,
and a meeting on Wednesday with the alliance’s secretary general got
off to a confrontational start when he said other nations must spend
more on defense and that Germany was a “captive of Russia” on energy.
•
Mr. Trump has upended generations of American diplomacy, antagonizing
and belittling traditional allies over issues like defense and trade,
while refraining from criticizing Russia, a traditional adversary.
• After the NATO summit meeting, he is to travel to Britain and then to Finland to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
•
The New York Times will have live coverage from Brussels throughout the
meeting, from our White House reporters and European correspondents.
In combative start, Trump belittles allies, especially Germany
Mr.
Trump kicked off his meetings on a contentious note, calling allies
“delinquent” for failing to spend enough on their own defense and
attacking Germany as a “captive” of Russia because of its energy
dealings.
“Many
countries are not paying what they should, and, frankly, many countries
owe us a tremendous amount of money from many years back,” Mr. Trump
said at a breakfast with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general,
at the residence of the United States ambassador to Belgium. “They’re
delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had
to pay for them.”
He
singled out Germany for particularly sharp criticism, saying the
country was “totally controlled by Russia” because of its dependence on
Russian natural gas. The United States spends heavily to defend Germany
from Russia, he said, and “Germany goes out and pays billions and
billions of dollars a year to Russia.”
In
March, Germany gave approval for Gazprom, the Russian energy titan, to
construct the Nord Stream 2 pipeline through its waters, a $10 billion
project.
“Germany
is a captive of Russia” because of the oil and gas issue, Mr. Trump
said. “I think it’s something that NATO has to look at.”
Mr. Stoltenberg countered that “despite differences,” NATO was about uniting “to protect and defend each other.”
But
Mr. Trump shrugged off the collective defense principle, saying, “How
can you be together when a country is getting its energy from the
country you want protection against?” — Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Merkel reminds people that she knows what Russian control looks like
Merkel reminds people that she knows what Russian control looks like
Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany offered a reminder that she learned firsthand,
growing up in the former East Germany, what it means to be a “captive”
nation. Modern Germany, she said, is not one.
“I
have experienced myself how a part of Germany was controlled by the
Soviet Union,” she told reporters who asked about Mr. Trump’s comments
as she entered the NATO leaders’ meeting. Now “united in freedom,” she
said, Germany “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”
In
her typical polite-but-firm fashion, Ms. Merkel showed no sign of
irritation at Mr. Trump’s remarks and did not say directly that he was
wrong, but she made her position clear.
She
noted that Germany was the second-largest provider of NATO troops,
after the United States, and had thousands of troops supporting the
American-led effort in Afghanistan.
“Germany does a lot for NATO,” she said, adding that, in the process, Germans “defend the interests of the United States.”
On military spending, Trump cites a real imbalance in misleading ways
American
presidents have long pressed other NATO nations to increase military
spending. But Mr. Trump’s insistence that they owe money to the
organization or to the United States misstates how the alliance works,
and the figures he cites are misleading. (Our reporters fact-checked the president’s claims on the financial relationship between the United States and NATO countries.)
NATO
has a budget to cover shared costs and some equipment that is used in
joint operations, and all 29 member countries contribute to it according
to their gross national income. None of the allies has failed to pay
its contribution.
Mr.
Trump’s complaint is that, while NATO has agreed that each member
country should spend at least 2 percent of its gross domestic product on
defense, most of them do not. But none has failed to comply with that
agreement, because the 2 percent figure is a target to be reached by
2024.
According to NATO,
all member countries have significantly raised military spending since
2014, and eight of them are expected to meet the goal in 2018.
Mr.
Trump tweeted on Monday that the United States accounted for 90 percent
of military spending by NATO countries, but the alliance says the real
figure is about 67 percent. And most American military spending is not
NATO-related.
Even
so, the organization says on its website, “there is an overreliance by
the alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of
essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refueling;
ballistic missile defense; and airborne electronic warfare.”
Mr.
Trump has a point about the outsize burden the United States shoulders,
a commitment that previous presidents have considered vital. But are
other countries in arrears in paying for their defense? No. — Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Steven Erlanger
NATO struggles to deal with its biggest critic: Trump
Mr. and Mrs. Trump before departing for Brussels.
Credit
Samuel Corum for The New York Times
Even before the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Stoltenberg, NATO leaders were trying to figure out how to be polite but firm with a United States president who disparages multilateral alliances, and dispenses with the usual platitudes in favor of lashing out on Twitter.
Generations
of United States policymakers have seen NATO as a bedrock of Western
security, but Mr. Trump describes its members mostly as a bunch of
freeloaders, riding on the coattails of American military spending
without holding up their end of the deal.
“NATO countries must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Tuesday,
before departing for Brussels. He also reiterated the claim he has used
to justify tariffs he recently imposed: That unfair practices are to
blame for the U.S. trade deficit with Europe and other regions of the
world.
Where his predecessors have spoken warmly of the allies and warned of Russian aggression, Mr. Trump has had harsh words for NATO, which he has called “obsolete,” and member countries like Canada and Germany, while rarely criticizing Russia.
Privately,
leaders of other NATO countries wonder if the president just wants to
goad them into raising military spending and strengthen the alliance, or
if he would prefer to abandon it. Either way, his approach, using overt
threats and insults, is a far cry from the usual diplomatic
give-and-take, and his counterparts are wary of provoking Mr. Trump.
Aside
from military spending, NATO allies are more at odds with American
policy than they have been many years, disagreeing on issues like his
withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accords, and
the trade war he has started.
Stoltenberg shrugs off Trump’s scolding, insisting the alliance is strong
If
Mr. Stoltenberg felt ambushed by Mr. Trump, he gave no sign of it,
declining to get drawn into an argument with the president in front of a
clutch of reporters.
Instead,
the secretary general, a generally unflappable Norwegian, stuck to his
mantra of recent days: NATO members are united on the principle of
collective defense, whatever their disagreements.
Rather
than confronting Mr. Trump, he has repeatedly given nods to the
president, praising his “direct language” and “plain-speaking,” and
saying that “we all agree” that more military spending is needed.
Mr.
Stoltenberg gamely stuck to his insistence that dissension does not
undermine the alliance, even as Mr. Trump continued to denigrate it.
“We
see differences, disagreements between allies,” he said on Wednesday.
“I’m confident that despite discussions, disagreements, we will decide
and we will deliver.”
“Two World Wars and the Cold War taught us we are stronger together than apart,” Mr. Stoltenberg said.
Trump will meet privately with Merkel and Macron
Trump will meet privately with Merkel and Macron
President Trump at a Group of 7 meeting in June with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and President Emmanuel Macron of France. Mr. Trump will meet privately with Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Macron in Brussels this week. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
President
Trump will have brief private meetings with Chancellor Angela Merkel of
Germany and President Emmanuel Macron of France on the sidelines of the
NATO summit meeting, his spokeswoman said.
The “pull-aside” talks are to come after the president attends formal meetings with NATO allies. .
Sarah
Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said the president
would use his session with Ms. Merkel to reiterate concerns he raised
Wednesday morning about Germany’s energy dependence on Russia.
The talks could be awkward, given Mr. Trump’s recent criticisms of Europe, and Germany in particular.
But
if they are, the public may never know about it. Ms. Sanders said the
White House would not allow any media coverage of either encounter. — Julie Hirschfeld Davis
With an eye on Russia, Baltics fear cracks in a security bulwark
With an eye on Russia, Baltics fear cracks in a security bulwark
Perhaps nowhere is European fear about American intentions more pronounced than in the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Long
ruled by the Russian giant to the east, these small nations gained
their independence in the early 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet
Union, and they see a very real danger in Russia’s assertiveness under Mr. Putin.
The countries joined NATO in 2004 to ward off that threat, and the alliance has recently stationed troops in the Baltic States as a kind of tripwire for any Russian incursion.
But
when asked two years ago, before he was elected, whether the United
States would defend the Baltic countries against a Russian attack, Mr. Trump equivocated. “If they fulfill their obligations to us,” he said, “the answer is yes.”
There
are significant ethnic Russian minorities in the Baltics, and people
there are acutely aware that protecting Russians was the reason the
Kremlin gave for its incursions into Ukraine.
As Trump snipes at Europe, a European snipes back
As Trump snipes at Europe, a European snipes back
With
heads of state taking care not to poke Mr. Trump, Donald Tusk,
president of the European Council, has emerged as the Continent’s most
prominent and pointed critic of the president.
Mr.
Tusk, one of the leaders of the European Union, has no formal role in
NATO, but the two groups have a large overlap in membership. On Tuesday
they signed a statement of cooperation.
Mr.
Tusk has made clear that he is paying close attention to the summit, he
has a megaphone, and he’s not afraid to use it. Tweaking and refuting
Mr. Trump, often slyly and sometimes quite directly, his comments are
widely seen to reflect what other European leaders are thinking but are
unwilling to say publicly.
The
United States “doesn’t have and won’t have a better ally than EU,”
whose members combined spend more on defense than Russia, he tweeted on Wednesday. “I hope you have no doubt this is an investment in our security.”
In June, after Mr. Trump’s angry exit from the Group of 7 summit and his broadside at Justin Trudeau,
the Canadian prime minister who played host to that meeting, Mr. Tusk
tweeted, “There is a special place in heaven for @JustinTrudeau.”
He used sharper language in May, after Mr. Trump withdrew from the Iran agreement and announced trade sanctions. Mr. Tusk tweeted, “with friends like that who needs enemies.”
Idle thumbs? Meeting rooms will be a Twitter-free zone
Mr. Trump enjoys sending Twitter barbs at his adversaries, but he will be restrained during the NATO summit meeting.
In
NATO’s new building, in the massive high-tech meeting room, no mobile
phones are allowed — not even for a president. Even if they were
permitted, they probably would not work, because NATO jams signals in
the building to prevent eavesdropping or hacking.
So at least for the hours he is with other leaders, Mr. Trump will be under a cone of silence.
Mr.
Trump will have to wait until he’s outside the NATO building to get to
his Twitter account in order to reassure his many followers that he
remains the @realdonaldtrump. — Steven Erlanger
A show of solidarity with Ukraine
NATO leaders are set to meet with their Ukrainian counterparts on Thursday to show solidarity with Kiev, in the face of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Moscow’s continuing military support of rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The
meeting is pointed reminder from the West of the principle that one
nation should not violate the territorial integrity of another, before
Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin in Finland. Talks on resolving the
dispute in Ukraine have essentially stalled, and Western diplomats do
not expect significant progress on the issue at the Helsinki summit
meeting.
NATO
leaders are also to meet with the leaders of Georgia on Thursday, in a
similar show of support for Tbilisi against Russia, which has occupied
parts of Georgia since 2008.
Ukraine and Georgia will be invited to discuss their progress in security and defense overhauls and their cooperation with NATO.
Membership
is a different matter, however. In 2008, at a summit meeting in
Bucharest, NATO promised both Ukraine and Georgia eventual membership in
the alliance, infuriating Mr. Putin. Those plans have been put on hold.
— Steven Erlanger
After NATO: The queen, Theresa May and Vladimir Putin
After NATO: The queen, Theresa May and Vladimir Putin
Military
spending and NATO’s stance toward Russia will be central topics at the
summit meetings, at a time when leaders of other Western countries worry
about a reduced American security role in dealing with Moscow.
Russia is waging a proxy war against Ukraine, has forcibly annexed part of that country, has meddled in other nations’ elections, gives crucial support to the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, and stands accused of using a chemical weapon on British soil.
After
the NATO meeting, Mr. Trump will travel on Thursday to Britain, where
he is scheduled to meet with Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister
Theresa May. He will spend little time in London, where thousands of
people are expected to attend protests against the president, who is not
popular in Britain. The American Embassy warned U.S. citizens to “keep a
low profile” during his visit because of the protests.
On
Saturday, Mr. Trump will travel to Scotland and stay at one of his golf
resorts, Trump Turnberry. The next day, he will fly to Helsinki, before
his meeting on Monday with Mr. Putin.
With
Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign under investigation for links to Russia, and
American relations with traditional allies strained, analysts will keep a
close eye on whether a friendlier mood prevails when the two presidents
meet.
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