NATO Summit: 'Everyone is trying their best to roll out the red carpet for Trump'

FRANCE 24 English

Visit our website: http://www.france24.com  Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/France24_en

Transcript

00:00NATO leaders are meeting for a summit in The Hague this Wednesday and they're expected to

00:04rubber stamp a pledge to boost defence spending to 5% of GDP. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter

00:10has praised US President Donald Trump for his win in getting Europe to pay in a big way.

00:17Spain, however, has said it wouldn't be able to reach the target by the new 2035 deadline,

00:22calling it unreasonable. The spending hike is designed to keep Trump engaged with the alliance

00:27after his return to power sparked fears that he could upend the seven-decade-old organisation.

00:33On his way to the summit, the US President refused to commit to Article 5 of the alliance,

00:37the mutual defence clause. Other items on the agenda are expected to include Ukraine's security

00:43after more than three years of war with Russia and the ongoing war in Gaza.

00:48We can get more analysis on this now with Teresa Fallon, who's in The Hague.

00:53She's the director of the Centre for Russia, Europe, Asia Studies. Thank you very much for

00:58speaking to us on France 24. Let's start by whether this NATO summit effectively is a victory lap for

01:05Donald Trump, especially after the president leaked a very flattering text message from NATO chief Mark

01:11Rutter. Or was this, as well as the fact of keeping the summit short and sweet, just an effort to avoid

01:17a blow-up from an unpredictable leader? This, of course, has been very carefully stage-managed.

01:24Mark Rutter wanted it to go well. The Hague is his hometown. They scaled it down to only two and a

01:30half hours, a very, very short meeting. Nevertheless, we see some moves by other European member states,

01:36which you noted. Spain said that they couldn't meet that. And also other countries, for example,

01:41are considering neutrality because they don't want to pay this type of bill.

01:44So Mark Rutter very skillfully came up with the 5%, which is what Trump wanted. But it's 3.5%

01:50for defence spending and 1.5% for infrastructure like roads, bridges. So this is one way for some

01:58countries to finesse it and maybe come up with some creative accounting.

02:03Well, is that 5% goal realistic then, especially after what Spain said, it being unreasonable? And

02:09we're hearing also from other countries who've perhaps tried to get exemptions on this.

02:13Well, this is a 10-year plan. So we saw this happen in the past to get to 2%. Some countries

02:20were quite active in doing that, while others were laggards. And it just depends pretty much

02:25where your geography is. So one way to look at it is one third, which are on the front lines of the

02:30war and have deep concerns about Russia. For example, Poland has already reached that or is close to

02:35reaching 5%. Whereas other countries like Spain, which are far away, there's about one third,

02:40another one third of countries, which are kind of can't do it for domestic reasons. They have

02:45elections coming up, they don't want to spend on defence, they'd rather spend on education, for

02:49example. So that's another pool. And then you have the one third that was going to try to make it

02:55and maybe right in the middle. So I think that this pie chart of one third, one third, one third is

03:00pretty much a better way to understand how the spending will be. Nevertheless, the US has been saying

03:05for quite many decades, different ways Obama said it, compared to Trump, but the US has made it quite

03:12clear that allies should contribute more. The US is growing threat of a peer competitor in China,

03:17and they really want to focus their attention on that. And the Europeans need to step up.

03:22And on his way to the summit, Donald Trump seemed to cast doubt on Article 5, refusing to commit to it.

03:28That's the clause that says an attack on one member is an attack on all. What's your take on that?

03:33I mean, we've since heard from other leaders saying, we have no doubt about the US's commitment

03:38to this article. But is Trump's USA still a reliable member of NATO?

03:45Well, at the NATO forum, which is running in parallel to the summit, there was a 15 minute

03:49interview with Whitaker, the US ambassador to NATO. And I understood it was very carefully scripted

03:56to demonstrate that the US does support NATO, does defend Article 5. But I think

04:03President Trump, that's his kind of approach, because the idea of being a little bit ambiguous

04:07should hopefully spur Europeans to spending more on defense. I think that might be his approach.

04:13I don't claim to know the real estate in his brain. But I think that the US has made quite clear that

04:18they do not mess around with Article 5. Nevertheless, I think President Trump does that. The Putin

04:25shock didn't wake Europe up to spend defense on defense. And I think the Trump shock is really doing

04:32it. And we see Mark Ruta, as you noted, with this kind of obsequious tweet saying, you know,

04:37in capital letters, almost mirroring Trump's writing of tweets, saying big and only you could

04:43do this. And even President Trump stayed in the palace last night. So I think everyone is trying

04:47their best to roll out the red carpet and make him feel at home and comfortable and just carefully

04:52manage this, this important summit.

04:54And meanwhile, Ukraine's also set to be a big topic. Volodymyr Zelensky is there. He's set to

05:00meet Trump on the sidelines. This is, of course, after their disastrous meeting in the Oval Office,

05:05but then a more calm one at the Vatican. How do you expect this meeting will go?

05:11Well, I thought it was interesting. I mean, visuals aside, I mean, President Zelensky wore kind of a

05:19suit jacket yesterday to the dinner. And this was something that some people in the White House

05:24criticized him for. So I thought that he's even trying to make effort to kind of comply with

05:28the president and his team's views of how someone should dress. I think that Zelensky has learned how

05:36to manage Trump in a much better fashion. And I think that it should go extremely smoothly. I think

05:41there's a lot at stake here. And I think that he has learned his lesson from the past experience in the

05:49White House, which was pretty traumatic, I think, for all involved. So I think that

05:53Sorry, Teresa Fallon, we're going to have to leave it there. We're running out of time. But thank you

05:57very much for speaking to us. Thank you.

Category

Transcript

Recommended