Trump’s public performance in Brussels was a disaster. Behind closed doors, it was even worse.
At long last, U.S. President Donald Trump endorsed NATO’s bedrock collective defense clause, Article 5, in a press conference Friday. “Absolutely, I’d be committed to Article 5,” he said Friday in response to a question from a journalist, speaking beside Romanian President Klaus Iohannis at the White House. It gives nervous NATO allies something they’ve yearned for since he came to office in January after disparaging the alliance and openly praising its top geopolitical foe, Russia.
But it may not be enough to patch things over with his NATO allies after his visit last month to Brussels, where Trump gave a public tongue lashing that surprised NATO leaders and his national security team alike — because behind closed doors, things were even worse.
After a public showing on May 25 in which Trump refused to endorse NATO’s collective defense clause and famously shoved the Montenegrin leader out of the way, leaders of the 29-member alliance retired to a closed-door dinner that multiple sources tell Foreign Policy left alliance leaders “appalled.”
Trump had two versions of prepared remarks for the dinner, one that took a traditional tack and one prepared by the more NATO-skeptic advisors, Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon. “He dumped both of them and improvised,” one source briefed on the dinner told FP.
During the dinner, Trump went off-script to criticize allies again for not spending enough on defense. (The United States is one of only five members that meets NATO members’ pledge to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense.)
Several sources briefed extensively on the dinner say he said 2 percent wasn’t enough and allies should spend 3 percent of GDP on defense, and he even threatened to cut back U.S. defense spending and have Europeans dole out “back pay” to make up for their low defense spending if they didn’t pony up quickly enough. Two sources say Trump didn’t mention Russia once during the dinner.
“Oh, it was like a total shitshow,” said one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren’t authorized to discuss the closed-door dinner.
“The dinner was far worse than the speech,” said a former senior U.S. government official briefed on dinner. “It was a train wreck. It was awful.”
NATO headquarters declined to comment on the dinner. “This was a confidential dinner of allied leaders and we respect their confidence,” a NATO spokesperson said.
Trump’s actions during his Brussels visit, both in public and behind closed doors, shed light on how the transatlantic relationship has soured in just the few short months since Trump took office.
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And the fact that his pledge to Article 5 was prompted by a question from a journalist instead of in prepared remarks won’t help the matter, said Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert at the Atlantic Council. “Trump’s improvised and conditional statement about NATO’s Article 5 is not how to reassure allies and certainly not how to deter Russian aggression,” said Benitez.
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Sources: NATO dinner with Trump and other leaders "was like a total shitshow," "far worse than the speech." https://t.co/UuIiCoXbz6
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 9, 2017
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