In the past Trump has horrified America’s allies by suggesting he could pull the U.S. out of NATO. He’s proposed a new target for NATO members to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense, up from the alliance’s current target of 2 percent, which many European countries still fail to meet.
On Tuesday, Estonia and France added their voices to those backing Trump’s call for higher spending on defense.
An EU official added: “The fact that we need to do more on defense at [the] EU level is definitely not a novelty and is linked more to Putin and Russia’s threat than to who sits in the White House.”
Maybe. But the arrival of Trump has undoubtedly focused minds.
“They have been quite forward-looking on the defense and security agenda,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group. “And on trade, they have got a large number of measures that are ready to go but they’re not going to press fire until they know what Trump is going to do.”
That’s the real problem: Trump is impulsive and it’s impossible to know what he may decide to do next.
“At a time of major war on the continent, the stakes for Europe in correctly calibrating its response are greater than [for] any other region in the world,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, Americas director at the Chatham House think tank in London. “He has shown he remains unpredictable and willing to test the boundaries of US alliances in totally unexpected ways. That makes understanding his intentions both urgent for world leaders — and incredibly hard.”
Rory O’Neill, Karl Mathiesen, Emily Schultheis, Gabriel Gavin, Giovanna Coi, Jordyn Dahl, and Douglas Busvine contributed reporting.
