Now Europe will have to fiddle to avoid angering Trump

European leaders ready to fiddle for Trump – but the goal is impossible

Niclas Vent

Reporter

This is a commentary text. Analysis and positions are those of the writer.

Published 11.46  

 

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has been described as the “Trump whisperer”, the man who can talk to Trump. Here at a meeting at the White House in March. Photo: AP

Now all of Europe’s leaders are gathering to fiddle for Donald Trump.

They are trying to buy time, and must not fail.

But everything could get even worse if it goes their way.

5 percent of GDP for defense.

When Donald Trump suddenly pulled that figure out from somewhere below his lower back in January, it was seen as unrealistic, an exaggeration or a joke.

The US spends only 3.38 percent of its GDP on its own defense – and now he’s demanding that all NATO countries spend 5 percent? 

There were those who suspected that the point was that it wouldn’t work. That Trump was trying to set the bar so high that many states would surely break it, thereby giving him reason to distance himself from NATO.

Now, instead, 5 percent in defense spending seems, against all odds, to be the goal that NATO leaders at the summit in The Hague agree to try to reach.

Behind the plan is Secretary General Mark Rutte, the man who was described as the “Trump whisperer” before he took office, the man who could talk to Trumps.

He has done everything to ensure that the summit doesn’t fall apart.

It will be unusually short and sensitive issues, such as Ukraine, have been brushed aside.

There will simply be no room for argument.

But there is one lesson above all that Rutte has clearly learned from Trump's first stay in the White House:

It is important to let him win.

In order to reach Trump's made-up figure of 5 percent, Rutte has concocted a kind of compromise.

According to credible information, 3.5 percent is needed to deliver on NATO's defense plans.

The goal will thus be twofold: 3.5 percent of GDP will go to real defense spending and 1.5 percent to other defense-related investments, such as infrastructure and cyber defense.

This opens up a lot of creative accounting, where some countries will apparently try to cram this and that under that 1.5 percent.

 

Sweden is among the best in the NATO class. Photo: Johan Nilsson/TT

The truth is that few countries are likely to reach 5 percent in practice.

Spain doesn't want to, France can't afford it, Germany lacks the political stamina and Britain doesn't even seem to be able to pretend: The Minister of Defense vaguely sketches out how to get to 3 percent around 2034 (when failure happens to be a problem for a new government).

What I hear from the closed meeting rooms is that Britain has also tried to postpone Rutte's and the US's proposed deadline, 2032, by three years to 2035.

Sweden, which has locked itself in at least 3.5 percent in real defense spending by 2032, is thus among the best in the NATO class.

Promising things you already know you will never do is of course a plan with some obvious risks.

This will bite Europe in the ass no matter what.

But it is probably a calculated risk.

Trump needs to be kept in a good mood now, not later.

When the promises are to be fulfilled, there may be a new president in the White House, and in any case, even a more modest rearmament could put Europe in a better position vis-à-vis Russia towards the end of the decade.

The next two or three years are the really dangerous ones. The US must not, under any circumstances, abandon Europe to its fate, not now.

That we then have to fudge, exaggerate and play along to secure American support is a humiliation that our European leaders seem willing to swallow.

 

The most important thing for NATO is to secure Trump's support. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP

A finger of warning must be raised,however.

There is no reason to believe too much about Donald Trump.

He probably has no greater ambitions with his demands than to pick pockets and bully the European spectacled snakes in the NATO schoolyard.

The problem is that he may have stumbled upon an unpleasant truth.

Perhaps 5 percent of GDP is exactly what NATO needs to invest to deter Vladimir Putin from an attack.

The alliance’s defense plans are full of holes. There is a shortage of everything. Air defenses must increase by 400 percent, according to Mark Rutte. Russia produces as much ammunition in three months as NATO does in a year.

Military intelligence agencies count on one hand the number of years Russia needs to prepare for a westward attack.

In that light, the European NATO countries’ scheming and false play looks less like a clever tactic – and more like a fatal misjudgment of historical proportions.