NATO top: a challenge to appease Trump and save the unit

Under the pressure of Donald Trump, NATO is preparing to engage on a spectacular increase in its security expenses, at a summit Tuesday and Wednesday in The Hague aimed at reassuring the future of the alliance and calibrated to avoid a sland on the American president.

The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had been originally kept away, after his altercation with the American billionaire in the oval office of the White House. But he should finally meet his American counterpart on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the summit, according to a senior official of the Ukrainian presidency.

Expected Tuesday evening, the tenant of the White House will participate in a gala dinner, in the invitation of the King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander. The American strikes in Iran, and the announcement by the American president of a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, will also be in all minds.

But the secretary general of the Alliance, Mark Rutte, hopes that the situation in the Middle East will not completely upset the choreography of the summit which he has already described as “historic”, before the arrival in the Hague of the American president and his team. The new US administration had thrown cold in Europe after having tanced its leaders and took the side of the far right, especially in Germany.

“The American president and the leaders of the United States are completely committed to NATO,” said his secretary general Mark Rutte on Tuesday, scanning the fears of American disengagement in Europe. “Stop worrying!” He said to Europeans, calling them to focus on this “big problem, this huge pebble in the shoe, that we do not spend enough, as European and Canadian,” he added.

Since his return to the White House, Donald Trump has continued to claim European countries from the Alliance, and Canada, that they allocate at least 5% of their gross domestic product (GDP) to their defense. With this requirement in mind, the 32 member countries agreed on a compromise: an engagement to devote, by 2035, 3.5% to military spending stricto sensu, and 1.5% to safety expenses in the broad sense, such as cybersecurity or military mobility.

The latter are much easier to reach since they are for the most part already envisaged or planned by states. Even limited to 3.5%, the budgetary effort is considerable, several hundred billion euros, for many countries which are already struggling to reach the target of 2% of military spending, set in 2014 at a previous summit.

On Monday, Mark Rutte was delighted with this “leap forward”, the Kremlin denounced on Tuesday a “frantic militarization” of the alliance. The United States would have liked the final press release of the summit to be limited to this 5%target. But for European allies, the Russian threat was to be mentioned.

In a common column published Monday evening by the Financial TimesEmmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz pointed out that Europe should rearm “not because someone asks us, but because we are clairvoyant and owe it to our citizens”.

The French head of state and the German chancellor also send a message to the American president to try to keep the conflict in Ukraine high in the agenda: “the main source of instability for Europe comes from Russia”, they hammer, and it is therefore necessary to “increase pressure” on Moscow, “including by sanctions”, to lead to a cease-fire with kyiv.

The final statement of the summit should reserve a few words for Ukraine. The Allies will reaffirm their support for kyiv, who has already reached some 35 billion euros this year, said Mark Rutte on Monday.

The latter, back in his hometown, is however not safe from a dramatic blow from the American president, as his precipitated departure from the G7 last week. “If the summit takes place almost normally, it will be a victory,” sums up Camille Grand, from the European Council for Foreign Affairs (ECFR) to AFP. “But the unknowns remain numerous. Questions that are not trenched too, ”he underlines. “The Gordian-Ukraine node will not be decided in The Hague. Yet this is what motivates Europeans to spend more … “, he notes.