Nato marks 70th birthday with rancour and infighting

‘Most successful alliance in history’ facing questions about its fundamental values

Nato marked its 70th birthday by declaring that it was the “most successful alliance in history” and the achievements of the transatlantic partnership deserved to be “fully celebrated”.

But the summit of the group of western nations, supposedly showing its unity and military might, was beset with accusations, recriminations and searching questions about its fundamental aims and values.

The Nato leaders’ meeting – the main event of the three-day summit – due to be held this year in the Grove Hotel in Watford on Wednesday, is normally about setting the policy of the organisation. But this time it has become very much about clashing personalities.

Donald Trump, unsurprisingly, was the loudest voice, calling Emmanuel Macon “nasty” and “very insulting” about the alliance and claiming, without offering any evidence, that France would “break off” from Nato.

Mr Trump was responding to questions about the French president’s own recent highly publicised charge that Nato was “braindead” and Europe should start thinking of itself as a “geopolitical power” to ensure that it remained “in control” of its destiny.

One of the key drivers of Mr Macron’s views was Mr Trump’s repeated criticism of Nato and threats to disengage and cut contributions. The US president announced his arrival at the Nato summit in Brussels last year with insults and threats towards the allies, while praising Russia – a country which allegedly helped put him in the White House – and its leader. Nato, he had previously declared, was “obsolete”.

The US president went from Brussels to Britain to meet then-prime minister Theresa May before a summit with Vladimir Putin in Finland. Arriving in Helsinki, he stated: “I have Nato, I have the UK, which is in turmoil and I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all. Who would think? Who would think?”

Speaking in London on Tuesday, Mr Trump said: “I am looking at him [Mr Macron] and I’m saying that he needs protection more than anybody and I see him breaking off [from Nato], so I am a little surprised at that.” French diplomats dismissed the US president’s claims of their country leaving Nato as “baseless” and “nonsense”.

Meanwhile claims emerged from Washington that it is America which may leave Nato in the future if Mr Trump wins a second term.

The week this summit began, the US announced that it was cutting its contribution to Nato projects. The sum involved would reduce the funding to the equivalent of Germany’s – a country Mr Trump has castigated for not putting more into the alliance.

John Bolton, the US president’s former national security adviser – his third in three years – suggested in a speech at a private hedge-fund event that Mr Trump could go “full isolationist” and withdraw the US from Nato and other international alliances.

This would be in tune, said Mr Bolton, with a Republican Party being increasingly influenced by the isolationist views of the Tea Party and figures like Senator Rand Paul.

Mr Trump, during the press conference in which he criticised Mr Macron, complained that the “US benefited the least” from Nato. Member states which he thinks are not spending enough on defence will be “dealt with”, he warned, through punitive trade measures, “so they have to pay”.

The television company NBC revealed that in the speech to Morgan Stanley executives, Mr Bolton also claimed that Mr Trump’s approach to Turkey has been motivated by the personal and financial interests of his family.

The Trump organisation has property projects in Istanbul and the US president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, attended the opening of Trump Towers Istanbul with Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2012. Mr Trump had himself said in an interview in 2015 that the project could present “a little conflict of interest” should he be elected.

Mr Trump faced widespread criticism in the US, including from Republican members of Congress, and from Nato allies for pulling US troops out of Syria. The decision, taken after a phone call with Turkey’s President Erdogan, left Kurdish YPG forces, which have fought alongside American and other western forces against Isis, to face a Turkish military onslaught.

Threats issued by the Turkish government have become a problem at the Nato summit. Before flying to London Mr Erdogan said he would refuse to approve plans to defend Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia if Russia attacked unless Nato formally recognised the YPG as a terrorist organisation.

Mr Macron, however, was adamant that “we don’t have the same definition of terrorism around the Nato table”. Last month the French president was the target of Ankara’s wrath for hosting an official from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in Paris.

The Turkish and French presidents were due to meet each other along with German chancellor Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson at Downing Street on Tuesday afternoon.

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, wanted to reassure members on its eastern flank that they would be defended against any assault by Moscow. “Through the presence of Nato forces in Poland and the Baltic countries, we are sending Russia a very strong signal: if there is an attack on Poland or the Baltic countries, the whole alliance will respond,” he insisted.

How to interact with China will be one of the issues to be discussed by Nato leaders. Mr Stoltenberg said the alliance needed to recognise the challenge posed by Beijing but did not want to make it an enemy.

“What we see is that the rising power of China is shifting the global balance of power, and the economic rise, the military rise, provides some opportunities and also some serious challenges,” he said at the Nato Engages forum in London.

Mr Trump said the US was doing “very well” from the trade war with China and he was in no hurry to sign an agreement before he ran for re-election next November. The FTSE 100 dropped more than 100 points in reaction, and the US stock markets were also expected to open lower.

The US has also threatened to slap 100 per cent tariffs on French products including cheese and champagne in retaliation for a French tax on global tech corporations Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Mr Macron said: “We’ll see where the discussions lead in the coming weeks, but it will involve a European response because, in effect, it wouldn’t be France that is being sanctioned or attacked but Europe.

“My first question is what will happen with the United Kingdom, which adopted the same tax? For Italy, the same tax? Austria, Spain. If we’re serious, those countries will have to be treated the same way.”

The European Union, said Mr Trump, should “shape up, otherwise things are going to get very tough”.