As he left Washington Tuesday morning to travel to The Hague for the annual summit meeting of the NATO military alliance, President Trump was busy trying to hold together a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Iran. “Now we’re going to NATO and we’ll get a new set of problems,” Mr. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We’ll solve a new set of problems.”
The tentative cease-fire between Israel and Iran will likely dominate the agenda at the meeting, even as Russia continues to pummel Ukraine at the edge of the alliance’s territory. Mr. Trump is also expected to claim victory and assert that all NATO allies have agreed to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product on their militaries, up from the current commitment of 2 percent. He has accused the allies of being overly dependent on the protection of U.S. forces.
“NATO was broke, and I said, ‘You’re going to have to pay,’ and we did a whole thing, and now they’re paying a lot,” he said.
But despite Mr. Trump’s eagerness to take credit, not all countries have committed to the pledge. Spain, for example, has said it would not increase its spending above 2.1 percent of its G.D.P.
“They’re having a problem with Spain,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday. “Always a problem with Spain. Spain’s not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them.”
And yet Mr. Trump has maintained that the United States — which spends about 3.5 percent of its G.D.P. on its military — does not need to meet the 5 percent goal he has demanded of other countries. He argues that, for one thing, the United States does not have the same need to invest in its infrastructure to support military equipment.
“A lot of that money goes to rebuilding their bridges, their roads, so it can take heavy equipment,” he said. “And you know, we don’t have any roads in Europe. We don’t have any bridges in Europe.”
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, has been eager to make Mr. Trump’s time at the summit go smoothly and avoid any diplomatic blowups — an effort that was clearly on display in a message from Mr. Rutte that Mr. Trump posted on his social media site.
In the message, which representatives for Mr. Rutte confirmed as authentic, the NATO leader praised Mr. Trump’s “decisive action in Iran” and said he was “flying into another big success in The Hague this evening,” citing a consensus on the 5 percent spending figure.
“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” the message said.
On the plane, Mr. Trump played coy when asked whether he was committed to Article 5, the part of NATO’s treaty that stipulates an attack on one ally would be defended as an attack on all. The president said it “depends on your definition” of Article 5.
“I’m committed to saving lives,” he said. “I’m committed to life and safety, and I’m going to give you an exact definition when I get there. I just don’t want to do it on the back of an airplane.”
Mr. Trump is expected to spend less than 24 hours on the ground in the Netherlands. He will attend a dinner with other world leaders on Tuesday night and start Wednesday by having breakfast with the country’s king and queen. He will then participate in the plenary session and hold bilateral meetings and a news conference before returning to Washington.
This is the fourth international trip of Mr. Trump’s second term, after a visit to Rome for the pope’s funeral, a trip to the Gulf and a brief visit to Canada for a Group of 7 meeting. He departed from Canada a day early because of the war between Israel and Iran.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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