‘Utterly crazy’: Trump’s NATO comments rattle Europe

 

‘Utterly crazy’: Trump’s NATO comments rattle Europe

BY NICHOLAS VINOCUR

FEBRUARY 12, 2024 7:01 AM CET

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/utterly-crazy-trumps-nato-comments-rattle-europe/

 

Brussels Playbook

By NICHOLAS VINOCUR

with ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH

 

 

LATE LAST NIGHT: Alexander Stubb won the presidential election in Finland.

 

Comeback kid: The former prime minister completed a surprising comeback on Sunday, winning a closely fought runoff to become the Nordic state’s president after seven years in the political wilderness, Charlie Duxbury writes here. “The result will be closely watched in European capitals and beyond given Finland’s strategically important location along the EU and NATO’s eastern border with an increasingly aggressive Russia,” Charlie adds.

 

Why it matters: The Finnish president leads foreign policy alongside the government, and is the Nordic state’s commander-in-chief.

 

TRUMP TROLLS EUROPE

TRUMP INVASION CALL HAS EUROPE REELING: Europe’s post-Donald Trump stress disorder had a major flare-up this weekend as the ex-U.S. president vowed not to defend NATO countries that don’t spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense, going so far as to invite Russia to attack them.

 

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ICYMI: The former president told a campaign rally in South Carolina Saturday that he had been asked by the president of a “big country” if the U.S. would come to its aid if it fell short of the 2 percent defense spending target.

 

The quote: “I said, ‘you didn’t pay. You’re delinquent.’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want.”

 

Is he for real? Was this just Trump being Trump, courting outrage without much intent? His former national security adviser, John Bolton, didn’t think so, telling MSNBC: “When he says he wants to get out of NATO, I think it’s a very real threat and it will have dramatically negative implications for the United States not just in the North Atlantic, but worldwide.”

 

Say it ain’t so: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg rushed in to do damage control, telling Norwegian TV that “any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines our security” and that he expected the U.S. to “remain a strong and devoted ally of NATO, whoever wins the presidential election.”

 

Get the full story: My colleagues Jones Hayden, Myah Ward and Jan Cienski have more on Trump’s comments here, and Varg Folkman has the reaction here.

 

Just bonkers: An EU diplomat wrote in to Playbook: “Let’s be absolutely clear. These remarks are of course utterly crazy coming from a potential U.S. president, while speaking about allies.”

 

There’s always a but: “But we also know that Trump basically acts as a schoolyard bully. So we have to deal with him, as you would with any schoolyard bully: you take seriously what you have to take seriously in order to keep your lunch money. But: you also have to be prepared to punch a bully square in the nose in order to draw a line and earn some respect,” added the diplomat, who specified they were speaking figuratively.

 

Not quite there: The latest trolling from Trump is bound to make some nervous. According to the European Defense Agency, total defense spending amounted to just 1.5 percent of GDP on average across the EU in 2023, despite some countries spending much more.

 

Awkward: An uncomfortable fact for EU leaders is that this kind of pressure from Trump worked while he was in office. Spending on defense rose steadily while Trump was in power, only to drop off once he left and then start rising again after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to figures from NATO shared here.

 

Take the hint: “It’s time to wake up,” tweeted French MEP Nathalie Loiseau, while Norbert Röttgen, a member of German Parliament, wrote: “Europe may soon have no choice but to defend itself. We have to do it because anything else would be surrender and self-sacrifice.”

 

Dial 9 for ‘strategic autonomy’: While Europeans are quick to agree that something needs to be done on defense, the question is: How and under whose leadership? Backers of Emmanuel Macron’s “strategic autonomy” agenda are quick to say Trump’s comments prove the French president’s analysis is correct regarding the need for a tougher, more sovereign EU.

 

Splendid isolation: But France has yet to win over the rest of Europe, amid glacial progress on cross-border weapons projects. It doesn’t help that in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, Paris isn’t seen as much of a leader on support for Ukraine.

 

There are signs of movement: My France-based colleagues Laura Kayali and Clea Caulcutt report the resurrection of the so-called Weimar Triangle — a France-Germany-Poland format that was put on ice under former Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, but is now back on under current leader Donald Tusk.

 

Weimar, rebooted: The foreign ministers of the three countries are due to discuss the war in Ukraine and how to boost the European defense industry, with France expected to refloat the idea of defense eurobonds (joint borrowing to finance defense projects). One question is who leads such meetings — nuclear-armed France, where defense spending is edging up to the 2-percent target this year? Non-nuclear Germany, also inching up but still not there? Or rapidly up-arming Poland, which blew past 3 percent in 2023 and is well on its way to 4 percent — and was mentioned no fewer than 23 times by Russian President Vladimir Putin during his interview with Tucker Carlson?

 

Bottom line: Much has been said about the rise of Eastern Europe as a power bloc following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Much of it is overblown. But as Trump looms ever larger, there’s no doubt frontline states like Poland are acting more decisively to prepare. Maybe they’ll even start being listened to.

 

NOW READ THIS: For decades, American officials traveled to Europe to cajole, persuade, even scold European allies into spending more on defense, writes Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, in an opinion piece for POLITICO. Now, the tables have turned.

 

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FAR-RIGHT SURGE

POLL SHOWS FRENCH FAR RIGHT ON TRACK FOR RECORD RESULT IN EP ELECTION: Macron won’t like this: France’s far right is projected to get a best-ever result in the upcoming European Parliament election, according to a poll from consultancy firm Portland Communications shared with POLITICO.

 

National Rally rises: The far-right National Rally, led by MEP Jordan Bardella, could win 33 percent of the vote, while the far-right Reconquest party of Eric Zemmour would bring in 6 percent, according to the poll.

 

Bad time for centrism: This would put the National Rally miles ahead of the centrist Ensemble coalition, which includes Macron’s Renaissance party and is expected to receive a meager 14 percent of the vote, my colleague Nicolas Camut writes here.

 

Methodology note: The poll was conducted online in late January — as France was in the midst of large-scale farmers’ protests — among 1,034 people forming a “nationally and politically representative sample.”

 

Not just France: Far-right parties are expected to make sizeable gains everywhere except for in Poland, where Donald Tusk’s liberal Civic Coalition is forecast to receive 35 percent of the vote.

 

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is projected to win 17 percent of the vote, up from 11 percent in the 2019 election.

 

What’s driving voters: In France, Germany, Italy and Poland, the cost-of-living crisis topped voters’ agenda, while the housing crisis was the top concern for Dutch respondents.

 

Immigration came in a close second in France, Germany and the Netherlands. In Italy and Poland, health care was the second-most cited issue.

 

In every country except Poland, most people reported being dissatisfied with the direction taken by their country.

 

NOW READ THIS: In this new long read by your Playbook author, I reflect on a lifetime of watching, covering and observing the National Rally in France as it evolved from a fringe party led by a Holocaust denier to a quasi-mainstream force today. Is it really a far-right party anymore? Answers here.

 

MEANWHILE, IN GERMANY: My colleague James Angelos also writes today about why some Germans fear the rise of the AfD could threaten the independence of the country’s judicial system.

 

MEANWHILE, IN SPAIN: In Catalonia, the issue of independence from Spain has hogged the political limelight for years. Now the focus is shifting to immigration. The emergence of a new far-right, pro-independence and anti-migrant party is putting pressure on the Junts party to harden its language on migration, Guy Hedgecoe reports.