US allies apprehensive after capricious Trump changes tune at Nato summit

Summary

Sudden shift may be linked to affinity for Erdoğan but what might be consequences of erratic behavior towards alliance? Donald Trump’s relationship with Washington’s Nato allies is nobody’s idea of a happy marriage. But the US president’s volatile performance at the western military alliance’s annual summit in Ankara this week seemed extreme, even by Trumpian standards. As commentators sought toexplain what happened, their usually capacious stock of Trump-fitting cliches was at risk of exhaustion. Trump arrived in the Turkish capital last Tuesday in a spectacular funk, visibly angry that the temporary ceasefire arrangement he had agreed with Iran had failed to hold, and threatening to unleash more destruction and mayhem in consequence. The country’s Islamic leadership, which he praised as “very reasonable” just two weeks earlier, were “scum” and “sick people”, he told journalists as he sat beside Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte. Just as vehemently, he lashed out at the alliance, which has been the cornerstone of collective western security policy since 1949, when it was founded as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in response to the spread of Soviet communism after the second world war. He has a tendency to see the world through not so much through alliances, but through individual countries and, above all, individual leaders … he has a sceptical view of alliances.” Equally effective is the extravagant flattery bestowed by Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister who has made an art of adapting his natural garrulousness to play the role of “Trump whisperer”, frequently praising the US president for “saving” Nato by getting European allies to raise their spending on defence, long a Trump bugbear. “Rutte is really doing a good job of trying to say to Trump, ‘Hey, it’s working. His remarkable public change of heart towards Zelenskyy – who was once told by Trump in the White House that “You don’t hold the cards” – may be fueled by disappointment in Putin, for offering no concessions to help end a conflict which has now lasted longer than the first world war, as well as a consciousness of sentiments in US Congress, to which the president had paid little heed in other affairs. “I think there’s a question of congressional opinion here,” said Lesser. “And as we get closer to the midterm elections, this is obviously going to weigh more heavily.” Despite the unexpectedly emollient finale, a school of thought has emerged that Trump’s regular bashing of allies will leave a permanent mark – even if he is eventually replaced by an administration with a more traditional view of the transatlantic alliance. Kupchan – author of a recent article entitled “America does not know its own mind” – warned Trump was a symptom, rather than cause, of a foreign policy malaise. “The underlying problem is the collapse of the political center – the reality that the United States doesn’t really have a foreign policy any more,” he said. “Every time there’s a presidential election, we swing from one grand strategy to a completely different grand strategy. “If you’re the chancellor of Germany or the prime minister of Japan and h