NATO – the Continuing Course of ‘Trump-driven Summitry’

So the ‘24 hour’ summit parade – or should I say the Trump performance spectacle – continues. We saw his 24 hour star performance at the G7 Summit at Kananaskis – kept in line by Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney; and now we played the audience to the 24 hour NATO summit choreographed by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

And now to his ‘star performance’ in the Hague at the NATO Summit. The event as we found out was finely tuned by the Secretary-General Mark Rutte including ending it after just 1 day to avoid, I presume, having Trump loudly leave the gathering early. Now in no way do I want to be dismissive of Rutte’s really excellent framing for the meeting. The marshalling of support was clearly described by our friends at the NYTimes:

“Mr. Rutte is skilled at handling Mr. Trump and has no embarrassment about flattering him. In an unusually unctuous message that Mr. Trump released on Tuesday, Mr. Rutte praised him for making Europe “pay in a BIG way” on increased military spending and for his “decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do.””

 

“To try to ensure a smooth summit, Mr. Rutte said: “Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” getting allies to commit to spending 5 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” Mr. Rutte added. NATO officials confirmed that the message, which Mr. Trump posted on social media, was authentic.”

The self congratulation was all about the commitment to raise defense spending demanded by Trump. And to be fair, objectively Trump’s insistence on greater defense spending efforts by NATO members was long overdue, especially in the light of continuing Russian actions against Ukraine and worries by Eastern European countries close to Russia. But even the agreement to move to 5 percent of GDP had a ‘sleight of hand’ at play as pointed to by the The Economist:

“The solution was two-fold. One trick was to stretch the timeline for meeting the target. Many states had pushed for 2032, with steady annual increases to get there. Others, though, under greater fiscal pressure—and not just Spain—pushed for 2035. In the end, regrettably, the laggards won, though allies are supposed to submit annual plans showing a “credible, incremental path” to the target, and will be subject to a bigger review in 2029.”

 

“The problem is that Russia is rebuilding its armed forces faster than previously thought. It had been assumed that it would take Russia seven years after any ceasefire in Ukraine to reconstitute its forces to the level needed for a confrontation with NATO. “The general assessment now should be five years,” one senior NATO official told The Economist. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” complains Dovile Sakaliene, Lithuania’s defence minister, suggesting that Russia could attack before the new spending turned up. “2035 is after the [next] war.””

Well kinda pandering but otherwise NATO leaders would likely have faced a growling and very unhappy Trump. The victim here, though, Ukraine. The Hague Summit Declaration is all of 5 paragraphs. And buried in paragraph 3 is the following:

“Allies reaffirm their enduring sovereign commitments to provide support to Ukraine, whose security contributes to ours, and, to this end, will include direct contributions towards Ukraine’s defence and its defence industry when calculating Allies’ defence spending.”

So, no clear condemnation of Russian aggression, no heartfelt declaration of support and determination to provide weapons needed by Ukraine, no upping sanctions but rather a tie in to the overall agreed spending increase by all NATO nations – skip Spain – to 5 percent of GDP. Wow. Steven Erlanger, the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, at the NYTimes underscored the muting of Ukrainian support:

“But it [the Declaration] makes no mention of NATO’s promise of eventual membership to Ukraine and Georgia, as previous summit communiqués have done. Past commitments, Mr. Rutte has explained with some exasperation, are considered settled and do not need to be repeated.”

So, Trump has succeeded in contorting – or at least reshaping – the Nato Summit to mirror and match his, Trump’s interests and quite frankly that is it. As pointed out in WPR:

“That solicitousness is in some ways understandable. During his first term, Trump made no effort to hide his disdain and even hostility toward the alliance, which he has portrayed as a way for wealthy European states to freeride on U.S. defense spending, with little to no benefit to Washington. Moreover, Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on his commitment to Article 5. And when it comes to the principal threat now facing the alliance’s European members—Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—Trump has adopted many of Moscow’s talking points, while curtailing U.S. support for Kyiv.”

And as for Article 5 – the collective security provision for the NATO members – the ‘heart’ of the alliance – with Trump at the helm I wouldn’t really want to put it to the test.

Indeed as the Economist somewhat startlingly described it relying on the words of Nato’s Mark Rutte:

“The tone was that of a parent congratulating a toddler. “Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe and the world,” wrote Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO, in a text message to Donald Trump, America’s president. Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.””

So what is the state of alliance relations following this seeming Trump ‘love fest’. Here is how WPR described the current state of alliance relations:

“Neither Trump’s calls for increased European defense spending nor European calls for increased strategic autonomy were anything new. But the sense of being under threat from both the east, in the form of Russian revanchism, and the west, in the form of U.S. retrenchment, for a moment seemed to create an urgency that was unprecedented.”

In the end Trump seemed satisfied by it all. Why wouldn’t he be. But a rather more insightful view was expressed by the President of the Czech Republic and recorded in the NYTimes:

“The president of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, a former general, put it well last week when he summarized his outlook for the summit.

 

On the one hand, he said, expectations for the summit are high, especially for new targets for military spending, but the goals are also limited because of the U.S. administration’s “approach.””

Great fanfare; much Trump performance; but far less than meets the eye.

This Post first appeared at Alan’s Newsletter – https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/nato-the-continuing-course-of-trump

Image Credit: France24

 

From EAF – ‘Trump’s disruption in Canada leaves the G7 at a crossroads”

Sorry for the Post’s delay. The following is a Post prepared for the East Asia Forum (EAF) on the recently concluded G7 Summit hosted by Canada in Kananaskis. It appeared today at EAF Sunday June 22, 2025.

Trump’s disruption in Canada leaves the G7 at a crossroads

Calming US-China Tensions

 

My colleague, Michael Swaine, now a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has produced two very insightful pieces on US-China relations. The longer piece can be found as a Quincy Brief and well worth reading. But if that is not possible, then a shorter examination is set out by Michael at  WPR. The ‘heart’ of both pieces is that stability arising from the Biden-Xi Summit at the margin of the APEC meeting in  San Francisco late in 2023 is far less than meets the eye. As Michael narrates in the WPR piece:

All this means that, far from developing the incentives and the means to avert a crisis or conflict, efforts on both sides to reassure each other on their vital interests are ringing increasingly hollow, with the result that both continue to view each other as engaging in evasive or, worse yet, hypocritical and duplicitous behavior.

And with respect to Taiwan, set out in the Quincy Brief, Michael paints a rather bleak picture:

The reality, however, is that the features and trends pushing both countries toward a confrontation over Taiwan persist, fueling a dangerous, interactive dynamic that could quickly overcome any diplomatic thaw between the world’s foremost powers.

Why have the two leading powers come to such a serious pass in the face of what appeared to be a solid effort to stabilize the relationship at the margins of APEC? Here Michael is clear:

Achieving this requires each nation to match its formal statements clearly and reliably with its actual behavior—in other words, to avoid hypocrisy—with regard to what each side regards as its vital interests, and to do so consistently over time. This in turn requires both sides reaching a mutual understanding of what their vital interests are, the meaningful assurances regarding them that each desires, and what would constitute violations of those assurances and, hence, threats to the concerned party’s vital interests. …

Unfortunately, despite some initial efforts, neither Washington nor Beijing has thus far met these requirements. Perhaps the most prominent example of this failure involves what began as the “Four Noes and One No Intention,” but which Beijing now calls the “Five Noes.” These reportedly affirm that the United States: does not seek a new Cold War with China; does not aim to change China’s political system; is not revitalizing its alliances to counter China; does not support Taiwan’s independence; and does not seek a conflict with China. [WPR]

From Michael’s perspective the United States has failed to reassure China that indeed it is committed to the “Five Noes”. Then, added to this is the failure to provide the reassurances necessary over Taiwan. As Michael describes the Taiwan situation:

  • The increasingly high (and arguably growing) stakes the Taiwan issue presents for both Beijing and Washington;
  • Deepening levels of domestic threat inflation on each side;
  • The growing tendency on both sides to worst case the motives and intentions of others (fed by a persistent lack of trust) while failing to recognize the interactive nature of the rivalry;
  • A resulting steady erosion of confidence in the original, stabilizing bilateral understanding regarding Taiwan reached between Beijing and Washington during the 1970s normalization process, and a related stress on deterrence over assurance;
  • The absence of effective bilateral crisis prevention and management Mechanisms”. [Brief]

While the two articles focus on somewhat different aspects of the US-China relationship, the big conclusion I draw from these two very insightful pieces by Michael is that both leading powers are providing insufficient assurances to the other of the desire of each to maintain the status quo and peaceful relations.

The rising gyre of action and response between the two is underlined by Michael:

In China, U.S. assertions that the One China Policy has not changed, or that its relations with Taiwan remain unofficial, thus fall on deaf ears. And the apparent hypocrisy of U.S. behavior is then used to justify more provocative Chinese actions, which lead many Americans to conclude that Beijing is jettisoning its commitment to peaceful unification.

This worsening situation is made even more dangerous by the absence of substantive crisis prevention and management mechanisms and procedures between the two nations. It is true that Washington and Beijing have recently agreed to resume a nascent military–to–military crisis communication working group that remained suspended since 2019 and appear to be working to revive a few other more established agreements designed to avoid incidents in the air and at sea. [Brief]

For Michael the heavy reliance on military deterrence, as opposed to material bilateral reassurance is at the heart of the shaky relations between the two. What is needed is clear, according to him:

There are, however, concrete steps that the U.S. government, Congress, and civil society can take to reduce the mounting tension around the Taiwan issue and remove it as a major factor driving the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing. Most importantly, both sides must reverse the tendency to regard the island as a surrogate for the overall U.S.–China strategic competition.

This requires, as a first step, efforts to reduce the overall intensity of the bilateral rivalry, by eliminating the heretofore divisive, often politically–induced, zero–sum rhetoric that has dominated much of the dialogue in Washington and Beijing, and ending, to the extent possible, the mismatch between the words spoken and actions taken on both sides.” “… Such overblown rhetoric and hypocrisy deepen distrust and signal that there is no potential common ground on critical issues such as Taiwan’s future. They reinforce worst–case assumptions about motives and therefore increase the likelihood that manageable crises will become severe conflicts.[Brief]

Michael then sets out a rather lengthy list of reassuring statements that the US might express to undermine any trajectory toward confrontation and conflict. As he says:

These statements would represent a clear shift from the current drift toward confrontation and abandonment of the “One China” normalization understandings with China over Taiwan. They would not constitute a new U.S. policy so much as an attempt to restore policy understandings that have maintained peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait for decades.”[Brief]

In an ideal world such efforts backed by equally reassuring statements and actions from China could well represent an optimal path for US-China relations in the immediate circumstances. Unfortunately, in a Presidential election year and with the heavy cloud of a possible Trump re-election and his growing wild rhetoric of an 8-month campaign, it seems to me Michael’s solutions in these circumstances may well unfortunately be overreach. What therefore can be done in this difficult period.

It would be nice if a Leaders Summit was planned relatively soon but unfortunately the Brazil G20 Summit is scheduled to  take place after the US election. Thus a bilateral meeting at the margins of a summit is not going to be possible. Bad timing I’m afraid. In the face of a poor calendar the best that might be hoped for are confidence building gatherings of senior officials. Here too the G20 can be useful. There are a large number of ministerial sessions that provide the setting for side meetings by US-China senior officials. These bilateral side gatherings provide opportunities where expressions of reassurance could be had and public statements made that underline the US-China effort to maintain stability and express specific collaborative policy initiatives. It might provide just the kind of opportunities that Michael believes might help stabilize US-China relations.

Image Credit: France24

This Post first appeared at my Substack, Alan’s Newsletter https://globalsummitryproject.substack.com/p/calming-us-china-tensions?r=bj&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true

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