‘The Art of the Deal’ with NATO: Clear messaging, less bullying

On Thursday, as part of his trip to Europe and the Middle East, Donald Trump will attend an annual NATO summit, held in Brussels. Having called the alliance obsolete and presented the German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a “bill” for the amount Germany supposedly owed the United States, there is no wonder Europeans are queasy about the meeting — not to mention the steady stream of Russia-related scandals surrounding the U.S. presidency, reverberating on both sides of the Atlantic.

To be fair, the central message that President Trump has for his European counterparts is a reasonable one. For a long time, Europe has neglected its own defenses and its capacity to project strength, relying instead on America’s military might.

{mosads}What matters now — after a transition in Washington that has left Europeans with a lingering uncertainty about the meaning and the future of the transatlantic partnership — is how Trump presents this message. If he simply tries to repeat his earlier threats of the United States’ leaving the alliance, or presents the allies with yet another “bill”, the outcome is bound to be disastrous. But there is another way.

First of all, Trump needs to acknowledge that a number of countries are already meeting their defense spending targets of 2 percent of GDP (Greece, Estonia, U.K., Poland), while others are either close (France) or on track toward hitting it in the coming years (e.g. Lithuania and Latvia). For the most part, the governments that are ramping up their defense spending are doing so because they feel it is in their immediate interest, given the proximity of Russia and the Kremlin’s belligerence.

There is no point in cajoling those whose budgets are growing. How exactly the money is spent is as important as how big the overall budget figures are. Rushed spending increases, not guided by an overarching strategy regarding how the different militaries are going to complement each other, can be counterproductive.

Just last week, the Slovak government announced a purchase of 485 armored vehicles, worth 1.2 billion euros, without articulating anything resembling a plan of how the new equipment will fit within the Slovak armed forces, much less within the broader NATO infrastructure.

But what should the U.S. administration do about those countries that do not meet the 2-percent target and display little willingness to spend more? In relative terms, Germany spends less on defense than it did in 2009. Germany’s Vice Chancellor Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that he knew “no politician in Germany who thinks that [the 2-percent target] is something you can reach or that it even would be desirable to do so.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who served as prime minister of a country that has spent chronically less than 0.5 percent of its GDP on defense (Luxembourg), is in turn “very much against letting ourselves be pushed into this.”

Thinly-veiled threats or other “Trumpian” antics will not convince the skeptics. Instead, “The Art of the Deal” in this instance will require Trump to present NATO with a coherent vision and a strategy of how the additional capacities will be used to boost European security.

For example, it is in the immediate interest of Europe’s Mediterranean countries that Libya and the broader North African region stop existing as a hotbed of conflicts and human smuggling. That will require Western engagement, likely including a long-term deployment of a peacekeeping force in Libya. For good reasons, the French maintain a strong presence in Mali, but that should be complemented by more effective NATO-led operations elsewhere in the region.

In Syria, President Bashar al-Assad, assisted by Iran and Russia, is coming closer to regaining control over most of the country, while leaving a significant vacuum filled by ISIS. To allow that to become the outcome of the six-year conflict would be to accept yet another source of instability and terrorism that would plague the West for years to come.

The alternative route, which consists of changing the military balance on the ground in order to end Assad’s regime and defeat ISIS, is harder but is also an opportunity to reinvigorate the trans-Atlantic partnership and provide it with a new focal point.

After the horrific attack in Manchester on Monday, Europeans are not intrinsically opposed to Trump’s idea that NATO should become more active in counterterrorism operations. What they are missing, however, is a concrete strategy and leadership that only the United States can realistically provide.

Not many are willing to bet that Trump will rise to the occasion. But if the U.S. president, who at other times seems obsessed with how others perceive him, cares at all about how he’s remembered in history books, he should do everything he can to prove his critics wrong.

Dalibor Rohac is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter @DaliborRohac.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.