Without dignity, leaders fell at Trump’s feet in The Hague – and for what? All Nato’s key problems remain | Martin Kettle

NThe summit of Ato The Hague was a branch orchestrated at the feet of Donald Trump. The initial meeting of two days scheduled was truncated in a single official morning company to flatter the president’s ego and welcome its short period of attention. The agenda has been cynically narrowed to focus on the defense expenses that it requires from the American allies. The problems that can cause or embarrass Trump – the Ukrainian conflict, or if the Iranian nuclear threat has in fact been eliminated by American bombing – have been relegated to the sidelines.

Instead, the flattery accelerator was opened as much as possible, with NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, leading the assembled fawing. Tuesday, Rutte hymged Trump’s shine on Iran; Yesterday he guaranteed it as the confirmed visionary of NATO’s desire to 5% of the GDP expenses. No one spoiled the party. As the former adviser of President Fiona Hill said yesterday, NATO seemed briefly turned into a Trump organization of the North Atlantic.

For Rutte and most heads of alliance, however, these were 24 hours of self-abandon with a specific objective. The goal of this first NATO summit in the second Trump presidency was to keep the United States as fully on board as possible with the Transatlantic Alliance. Nothing else was. Any rehearsal of the shocks that JD Vance and Pete Hegseth delivered in Europe to the Munich Security Conference in February were to be avoided at all costs. In pursuit of this objective, no humiliation or hypocrisy was too gross.

So, was it accomplished for NATO? Maybe yes, judging by Trump’s good behavior in Hague. The 5% commitment was “very great news,” he said. The United States was still attached to the doctrine of collective defense of article 5 of NATO, he seemed to say during his post -Summit press conference, although his curious choice of words – “we are there to help them protect their country” – will not reassure everyone. The leaders nevertheless emerged with what Henry James called “the equanimity of a result”. The NATO summit obtained what was designed to obtain.

But in the longer term, this appeasement of Trump does not solve anything. In political terms, the Hague summit does not mark the resumption of normal relations, not to mention the beginning of a new golden age of NATO. Such things are not possible in the Trump era. Politically, the summit was an dodged bunker buster. Admittedly, things have not won, a result that many, including Rutte, will consider as a kind of success. However, none of the other preexisting NATO difficulties have been resolved. Most remain firmly in place.

Among these, four stand out. The first and the most immediate is Ukraine. There was no change in Trump’s impatience with Ukraine, his belief in a ceasefire or his reluctance to renew American military aid. But other NATO members cannot provide the help of Ukraine needs. The war clung therefore, in part because of Trump. Some believe that war could even become permanent. “Rather than supposing that the war can be completed by a complete victory of the battlefield or a negotiated compromise,” wrote Carnegie Endowment analyst and former Ukrainian Minister of Defense Andriy Zagorodnyuk earlier this month, “Ukraine and her allies must plan to build a viable, sovereign and secure state.” Trump would not be interested in this.

The second difficulty is the unpredictability of Trump. Everything was well choreographed in The Hague, but how long will it last? No one can say with certainty. The world always absorbs the implications of the impulsive manipulation of Trump of Iran, in which military action was repudiated in favor of diplomacy one day, before the launch of the war, followed by the proclamation of peace on that after that. The bombing in Iran recalled the American allies of NATO in the way they have little with the president, and stressed the difficulty of guessing Trump’s actions.

This feeds the third problem. The commitment to spending 5% of GDP for Defense is a political objective and not a current reality. The United Kingdom, for example, aims to reach 5% by 2035, and it will only do so by the fact by means of Jiggery-Pokery on what can legitimately be classified as security, as shown in the new national security strategy document, published Tuesday to coincide with the NATO summit, clearly.

Ten years, it’s long. Many will change. Trump’s successors can be more attached to NATO, or they can be even more unreliable than him. There could also be a change of diet in other places. No one knows. War is sure to change, as the drone revolution has shown. NATO must be careful not to bring hypotheses from the 20th century to 21st century planning. The document of the national security strategy rightly poses this period as an era of “radical uncertainty”. However, investors, including investors in high -value high value industries such as defense, uncertainty.

Which brings us to the fourth problem. Posting things with Trump cannot solve anything because he walks towards his own drum. But threats do not disappear. This means that the European Nations of NATO and Canada must forge a viable collective defense system against hostile threats which does not depend on the whims of the person in the White House in each turn. It is a very great task. But Washington cannot have a veto on the question of whether the nations of Europe defend themselves, let’s say, the Russian attacks.

There is no real choice in the circumstances. Allies are faced with the enormous task of gradually reducing their long dependence on the United States technology and armaments without causing a complete break with the United States. At the same time, they must increase the defense capacity of their own and Europe. It is a diabolically difficult course, with which the political leaders of Great Britain, regardless of the world of security of Great Britain, would be deeply uncomfortable. It is however the one on which we are embarked.