Trump Poised to Enter NATO Meeting as Wild Card Among Allies

WASHINGTON — As he heads into this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting, President Donald Trump is widely seen as a wild card among allies who are seeking to show solidarity against Russian threats, fixated instead on his spending grievances and primed for a bitter confrontation that could further isolate the United States.

Trump’s increasingly strident complaints about NATO and apparent willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to President Vladimir Putin of Russia have worried the United States’ staunchest allies — and some within his own administration — and threaten to transform the gathering in Brusselsinto a showcase for dysfunction rather than unity.

The concerns are particularly acute against the backdrop of Trump’s planned meeting with Putin next week in Helsinki, Finland, raising the prospect that he will warmly embrace the authoritarian leader of a U.S. adversary just after alienating allies.

Trump was to arrive in Brussels Tuesday, the eve of the NATO meeting, at which American presidents are normally viewed as pivotal leaders and consensus builders. But in recent days, Trump has fumed that the United States is being exploited by Europe and hinted that he might instead play the role of agitator and spoiler, sowing disagreement among allies that would play intoPutin’s hands.

“The biggest deliverable of any of these summits is solidarity and sending a clear message to countries like Russia that the alliance isn’t going to be divided,” said Derek Chollet, the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “So there is quite a bit of concern about a blowup.”

“If you’re Vladimir Putin, and one of your core goals is to divide the United States from Europe and to show that the NATO alliance is a paper tiger, you’re feeling pretty good right now,” Chollet said.

Trump’s advisers are hoping to avoid a blowup akin to the one the president provoked at the Group of 7 summit meeting in Quebec last month, and have pointed Trump to evidence that NATO allies have responded to his aggressive pressure by increasing their own military spending.

But in private conversations, the president has been dismissive of the military alliance and the European Union, suggesting both entities exist to take advantage of the United States and strip it of capital.

On Monday, Trump tweeted that the United States was “spending far more on NATO than any other country.” He said the situation “is not fair, nor is it acceptable,” and said that it “benefits Europe far more than it does the U.S.”

At a campaign rally last week in Great Falls, Montana, Trump told thousands of supporters, “We’re the schmucks that are paying for the whole thing.”

“I’ll see NATO and I’ll tell NATO, ‘You’ve got to start paying your bills,'” Trump said at the rally. “The United States is not going to take care of everything.”

He also said he had suggested to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that the tens of thousands of U.S. troops that are stationed in her country might not be worth the expenditure — an opinion he has shared privately with advisers at the White House, according to one person familiar with the discussions.

Trump has dismissed concerns about Putin as overblown.

He has mocked skeptics who note that the Russian president is a former top official in the KGB, the feared intelligence service, by saying, “He’s fine.” Trump also brushed off concerns that he would be manipulated into offering Putin concessions, saying he was “totally prepared” for the meeting, which includes a one-on-one session.

Trump’s advisers have struck a far sharper tone against Russia.

They say that the president is ready to confront Putin about Russia’s “malign activities,” and that the United States wants a strong and unified NATO. They also have dismissed any suggestion that Washington would consider pulling back its military presence or commitment to the alliance in response to what it considers to be underspending by member countries.

“The major thing, the major deliverable, the major overall theme of this summit is going to be NATO’s strength and unity,” Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said in a conference call with reporters last week.

She said she had heard nothing about adjusting the United States’ military presence in Germany, and praised European allies for spending more on their defense, saying it would be a main focus of the gathering.

“Every one of our allies — 100 percent — are increasing defense spending,” Hutchison said. “So that is something that we will talk about as an achievement, but also that we need to do more.”

Her comments pointed up what has become a recurring theme in the Trump administration: The president often speaks and acts at odds with the rest of his government, which has left allies all the more uncertain about whether they can rely on the United States.

“In the past, Europe did not doubt that U.S. interests and values were fundamentally aligned with theirs,” said Daniel M. Price, who was an international economic adviser to President George W. Bush and a White House veteran of major summit meetings. “Now they wonder whether they can count on us in times of crisis without our first checking to see if they are current on their rent or royalty payments.

“The decline in confidence is palpable.”

Last month, Trump wrote personal letters to the leaders of several NATO allies taking them to task for failing to live up to a goal set in 2014 that every member work toward spending 2 percent of its gross domestic product on defense. His note to Merkel was particularly pointed, holding Germany responsible for other allies’ shortfalls as well as its own.

His pugilistic stance toward American allies has alarmed many conservatives. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, posted a tweet last week with reminders that appeared designed to speak directly to Trump on the eve of his trip.

“Things to remember before @realDonaldTrump travels to Europe,” it said. “Russia is the aggressor — Ukraine is the victim. Crimea belongs to Ukraine. NATO & US troops in Europe serve our national interests. Europeans must spend more on defense. Putin’s track record shows he can’t be trusted.”

Apart from his insistence that European allies must increase their defense expenditures, Trump has taken the opposite stance on nearly every item. Last month, he suggested that Russia should be readmitted to the Group of 7, from which it was expelled after illegally annexing Crimea.

During a phone call with Putin in March, when the president was urged by aides not to congratulate the Russian president on his electoral victory, Trump did just that. He told Putin that Russia and the United States should get along better. And he commiserated with Putin over Trump administration officials whom the Russian president said had tried to prevent the call from happening, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation.

“Those are stupid people; you shouldn’t listen to them,” Trump told Putin, the person said.

That approach has raised the stakes of the NATO gathering for Trump.

“In normal times, a president of the United States would rally the allies, develop a unified approach, and go with a strengthened hand to negotiations with the president of Russia, rather than reducing his own leverage,” said Alexander Vershbow, a former deputy secretary-general of NATO.

“A bad summit that focuses only on his grievances and complaints is a gift to Putin going into the meeting in Helsinki, where Trump is basically doing Putin’s work for him in dividing the alliance and demoralizing the allies,” said Vershbow, now a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.