NATO, Meet Donald Trump
BRUSSELS — Is NATO really that afraid of Donald Trump?
Trump’s first foreign trip as president has so far gone smoothly, and even predictably. At a time when his administration is mired in scandals at home, his journey abroad has been mostly incident-free, including meetings with world leaders in Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Rome. But on Thursday, Trump enters a more complicated world of multilateral diplomacy at the NATO leaders’ summit here.
His meetings with various leaders are mostly intended as a kumbaya exercise. But Trump’s wavering stance on NATO — he “obsolete” in January before “no longer obsolete” in April — has worried allies. So has his on Wednesday that Trump is expected to finally endorse Article 5 in his remarks in Brussels on Thursday, after having implied that the commitment was conditional on whether allies paid more for their own defense.)
