Donald Trump will attend the NATO summit in The Hague amid global tensions and controversy over Article 5. His comments on mutual defence, Iran-Israel ceasefire, and demands for increased defence spending are expected to dominate discussions.
-1750829903170_d.png "Donald Trump faces alliance further shaped to his liking after he spends a full day at NATO summit")
Donald Trump. Pic/File Pic
Amid all the global tensions that have been going on across the globe, President Donald Trump on Wednesday will meet with members of a NATO alliance. He will be meeting the members with whom he has worked to bend to his will over the years and whose members are rattled by his latest comments casting doubt on the US commitment to its mutual defence guarantees.
As reported by AP, Donald Trump's comments en route to the Netherlands that his fidelity to Article 5 “depends on your definition" are likely to draw a spotlight at the NATO summit, as will the new and fragile Iran-Israel ceasefire that Trump helped broker after the US unloaded airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.
At the same time, the alliance is poised to enact one of Trump's chief priorities for NATO: a pledge by its member countries to increase, sometimes significantly, how much they spend on their defence.
“NATO was broken, and I said, 'You're going to have to pay.'"
Moreover, Donald Trump said on Tuesday, “And we did a whole thing, and now they're paying a lot. Then I said, "You're going to have to lift it to 4 or 5 per cent, and 5 per cent is better.”
Spending 5 per cent of a country's gross domestic product on defence is ‘good’, Trump pronounced, adding that ‘It gives them much more power.’
The boost in spending follows years of Trump complaints that other countries weren't paying their fair share for membership in an alliance created as a bulwark against threats from the former Soviet Union. Most NATO countries, with the key exception of Spain, are preparing to endorse the 5 per cent pledge, motivated to bolster their defences not just by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine but also, perhaps, to placate Trump.
As a candidate in 2016, Trump claimed that as president, he would not necessarily follow the alliance's mutual defence commitments outlined in Article 5 of the NATO treaty. In March of this year, he expressed doubt that NATO would defend the United States if necessary, even though the organisation did so following the September 11, 2001, attacks.
On Tuesday, he went on to tell the reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to The Hague for the summit that whether he is committed to Article 5 ‘depends on your definition’.Trump also said, “There are numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right?”
Adding, “But I'm committed to being their friend.” He signalled that he would give a more precise definition of what Article 5 means to him once he is at the summit.
Trump also vented to reporters before leaving Washington about the actions of Israel and Iran after his announced ceasefire. He said, in his view, both sides had violated the nascent agreement.
After Trump arrived in the Netherlands, news outlets, including The Associated Press, published stories revealing that a US intelligence report suggested in an early assessment that Iran's nuclear programme had been set back only a few months by weekend strikes and was not ‘completely and fully obliterated’, as Trump had said.
However, considering this report, the White House called the report “flat-out wrong", and Trump posted in all-caps on social media early Wednesday that any reporting that the strikes weren't “completely destroyed” was an attempt to ‘demean one of the most successful military strikes in history.’
As of now, the White House has not said what other world leaders Trump would meet one-on-one while in The Hague, but he said he was likely to cross paths with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
(With AP Inputs)
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