London: US President Donald Trump launched a blistering attack Tuesday on France’s criticism of NATO strategy as ‘brain dead’, but French leader Emmanuel Macron doubled down and turned his fire on Turkey.
The three-way battle overshadowed the build-up to the alliance’s 70th anniversary summit here. It threatened to derail efforts to show unity in the face of Russia and China.
Macron had tried to shake up the agenda of the meeting by demanding a review of NATO strategy, but Trump – who arrived boasting that he had forced members to boost defence spending – hit back hard.
“I think that’s very insulting,” Trump said of Macron’s assertion last month that NATO’s is experiencing ‘brain death’ and should focus more on Islamist terrorists and on re-opening a strategic dialogue with Russia, branding it a ‘very, very nasty statement’.
“Nobody needs NATO more than France,” Trump warned. “It’s a very dangerous statement for them to make,” he added.
Trump later softened his tone at a joint appearance with Macron, but the French leader stood by his statement, going on to lay the groundwork for a difficult meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan by accusing Turkey of working with extremists in Syria.
“My statement created reaction from a lot of people. I stand by it,” Macron said, just ahead of a one-to-one meeting with Trump.
“The common enemy today is the terrorist groups, as we mentioned, and I’m sorry to say that we don’t have the same definition of terrorism around the table,” asserted Macron. He noted that Turkey has attacked the Kurdish militia that backed the allies against the Islamic State (IS).
“When I look at Turkey they now are fighting against those who fight with us, and fought with us shoulder-to-shoulder against IS. And sometimes they work with IS proxies. This is an issue,” declared Macron, shortly before he was due to meet an already furious Erdogan.
Erdogan has threatened to hold up NATO efforts to beef up the protection of the Baltic republics against Russia, unless the other allies declare the Kurdish militias who fought with US and French forces against IS in northeast Syria ‘terrorists’.
NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg renewed his own criticism of the French leader’s remarks, stating allies ‘should never question the unity and the political willingness to stand together and to defend each other’.
Trump defended Stoltenberg, boasting that NATO members have massively increased their defence spending thanks to his pressure. But the president then reiterated his long-standing complaints about European spending.
“When I came in, I was angry at NATO, and now I’ve raised $130 billion,” Trump said, referring to the sum Stoltenberg says Canada and European members will have added to defence budgets by next year. “And yet you still have many delinquent – you know I call them delinquent when they’re not paid up in full,” Trump pointed out.
Only nine of NATO’s 29 members spend two percent of their GDP on defence.
AFP
