The Nato summit beginning on Tuesday in Turkey is expected to be low-key as European members track their progress towards increased defence spending goals and Beijing watches intently from afar.
Low-key, that is, with one major caveat. Will the get-along US President Donald Trump show up, or the raging Trump who slammed the alliance, questioned its purpose and threatened repeatedly to take his military and head home?
Early indications suggested it would be the raging one.
“The United States spends more money on Nato than any other country, by far, to protect them, without getting any benefit from so doing,” Trump posed Thursday. “Ridiculous!”
The mercurial president’s impatience, distrust of multilateral groupings and repeated run-ins with Nato have its other 31 members walking on eggshells in advance of the July 7-8 gathering in Ankara.
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“It’s never quite clear with President Trump what will transpire,” said Max Bergmann, a director at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS], “Europeans view President Trump as quite combustible and are quite nervous.”
