The Room Where It Happened

by John Bolton;

  Brussels

  In years gone by, NATO summits were important events in the life of the alliance. Over the past two decades, however, the gatherings became almost annual, and therefore less than exciting. Until the 2017 NATO summit in Brussels, that is. Trump livened things up by not referring to the North Atlantic Treaty’s iconic article 5, which stated that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” This provision is actually less binding than its reputation, since each alliance member will merely take “such action as it deems necessary.” It had been invoked only once, after the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Nonetheless, NATO had been a successful deterrence structure, for decades blocking the Red Army from knifing through Germany’s Fulda Gap and deep into the heart of Western Europe. Of course, the United States was always the overwhelmingly greatest force contributor. It was our alliance, and it was primarily for our benefit, not because we were renting ourselves out to defend Europe, but because defending “the West” was in America’s strategic interest. As a Cold War bulwark against Soviet expansionism, NATO represented history’s most successful politico-military coalition.

  Did NATO have problems? Of course. Not for nothing was Henry Kissinger’s famous 1965 work entitled The Troubled Partnership: A Reappraisal of the Atlantic Alliance. The list of NATO deficiencies was long, including, after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, the feckless abandonment by several European members of their responsibility to provide for their own self-defense. Under President Clinton, America suffered its own military declines, as he and others saw the collapse of Communism as “the end of history,” slashing defense budgets to spend on politically beneficial domestic welfare programs. This “peace dividend” illusion never ended in much of Europe, but it ended in America with the September 11 mass murders in New York and Washington by Islamicist terrorists. NATO’s future has been intensely debated among national-security experts for decades, with many urging a broader post–Cold War agenda. Barack Obama criticized NATO members for being “free riders,” not spending adequately on their own defense budgets, but, typically, had simply graced the world with his views, doing nothing to see them carried out.2

  Trump, at his first NATO summit in 2017, complained that too many allies were not meeting their 2014 commitment, collectively made at Cardiff, Wales, to spend 2 percent of GDP for defense by 2024, which for most Europeans meant defense in the European theater. Germany was one of the worst offenders, spending about 1.2 percent of GDP on defense, and always under pressure from Social Democrats and other leftists to spend less. Trump, despite, or perhaps because of, his father’s German ancestry, was relentlessly critical. During consultations on the strike against Syria in April, Trump asked Macron why Germany would not join in the military retaliation against the Assad regime. It was a good question, without an answer other than domestic German politics, but Trump rolled on, criticizing Germany as a terrible NATO partner and again attacking the Nord Stream II pipeline, which would see Germany paying Russia, NATO’s adversary, substantial revenues. Trump called NATO “obsolete” during the 2016 campaign but argued in April 2017 that the problem had been “fixed” in his presidency. His noteworthy failure in 2017 to mention article 5 allegedly surprised even his top advisors because he personally deleted any reference to it from a draft speech.3 True or not, the 2017 summit set the stage for the potential crisis we faced in 2018.

  This storm had been brewing well before I arrived in the West Wing, but it was now directly ahead. Trump was correct on the burden-sharing point, as Obama had been, a convergence of views that might have shaken Trump’s confidence in his own had he paid attention to it. The problem, from the perspective of US credibility, steadfastness, and alliance management, was the vitriol with which Trump so often expressed his displeasure with allies’ not achieving the objective, or in some cases not even seeming to be interested in trying. In fact, earlier Presidents had not succeeded in keeping the alliance up to the mark in burden-sharing in the post–Cold War era. I certainly believed that, under Clinton and Obama in particular, the US had not spent enough on its own behalf for defense, regardless of what any of the allies were doing or not doing. If this were merely a critique of Trump’s style, which it seemed to be for many critics, it would be a triviality. Personally, I’ve never shied away from being direct, even with our closest friends internationally, and I can tell you they are never shy about telling us what they think, especially about America’s deficiencies. In fact, it was not Trump’s directness but the veiled hostility to the alliance itself that unnerved other NATO members and his own advisors.

  Trump asked to call NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at nine a.m. on Friday, June 29, just a couple of weeks before the upcoming summit. As we met in the Oval beforehand, Trump said he would tell Stoltenberg the US was going to lower its “contribution” to NATO to Germany’s level and ask him to inform the other members before the July 11–12 summit. (Here, we face a persistent problem with nomenclature. The Cardiff commitment is not about “contributions” to NATO, but about aggregate defense spending. Whether Trump ever understood this, and simply misused the word “contribution,” I could never tell. But saying he would reduce the US “contribution” to Germany’s level implied the US would drop its defense expenditures from over 4 percent of GDP by some 75 percent, which I don’t think he meant. Adding to the confusion, NATO has a Common Fund to pay for its headquarters’ operating expenses and the like, roughly $2.5 billion annually. Members do make “contributions” to the fund, but the fund’s spending is not what Trump was referring to. Pursuant to my later suggestion, I did persuade Germany to increase its Common Fund contribution, and the US to reduce its correspondingly, although this didn’t become final until December 2019.4)

  With Stoltenberg on the line, Trump said he had inherited a mess economically and that NATO was egregious, complaining that Spain (he had just met the King) spent only 0.9% of its GDP on defense. Rounding on Germany, Trump was pleased when Stoltenberg said he agreed that the Germans had to pay more, which, in fairness, Stoltenberg said consistently, urging NATO members to make plans to meet their Cardiff commitments by 2024 if not before. Trump rolled on, saying that the United States paid 80–90% of the cost of NATO, a number the source of which none of us ever knew. Aggregate US defense expenses (worldwide) amounted to slightly more than 70 percent of all military spending by all NATO members, but of course, much US spending was for global programs or other specific regions. Trump would later come to say he thought that, in truth, the US paid 100 percent of the cost of NATO. The source of that figure is also unknown. He told Stoltenberg that from then on, because this disparity in NATO payments was so unfair, America would pay only what Germany paid. Trump conceded that Stoltenberg regularly gave him credit for his efforts to increase NATO spending by the European allies, but argued that the only reason expenditures had increased was because the allies thought Trump would otherwise withdraw the United States from NATO. Trump stressed again that we simply would not continue to bear a disproportionate cost burden. Stoltenberg said he totally agreed with Trump that the situation was unfair, but he protested that after many years of declining NATO expenditure, we were now seeing an increase. Trump responded by urging Stoltenberg to tell that to the media, and asked him to speak with me to discuss the means by which the US would no longer “contribute” in the current, unjustified way to pay NATO’s costs, which was not justified, and which didn’t help the United States. Heretofore, said Trump, the US had been run by idiots, but no more. The Europeans didn’t appreciate us, screwed us on trade, and we would no longer pay for the privilege, but pay only what Germany paid. On and on it went in that vein. Trump said at the end he was officially protesting.

  Stoltenberg called me at about ten a.m., and I asked all NSC staff and Sit Room personnel to get off the call so I could be as straight as possible with Stoltenberg. I gave him my assessment that the now largely departed “axis of a
dults,” worshipped by the US media, had so frustrated Trump he was now determined to do what he wanted to do on several key issues no matter what his current advisors told him. I said we had clear notice of what might happen at the NATO summit. There should be no thinking that small, palliative measures might head it off. This was clearly something Trump had thought about doing and wanted to do his way, which he had now done. Stoltenberg seemed to have trouble accepting how bad it was, but after thirty minutes of near-nonstop verbal assault by Trump, and my explanation, he got the point. Our Ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, called me about noon, and I gave her a brief description of the Trump-Stoltenberg call. I said we would all be doing ourselves a disservice if we pretended the call hadn’t happened and resumed business as usual.

  Later that day, I briefed Pompeo. Rather than taking the issue of NATO on directly, he suggested we persuade Trump that, with so many other battles under way (notably the campaign to confirm Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court), we couldn’t overload Republicans with other contentious issues. There were only fifty-one Republican Senators, and we didn’t want to lose any of them because of threats to NATO. Pompeo and I agreed the two of us alone should present this case to Trump, with no generals present, so Trump didn’t think the “axis of adults” was ganging up on him again. Kelly immediately agreed to our strategy, as did Mattis, who also agreed Dunford need not participate. I filled in McGahn, whose focus on confirming Kavanaugh made him more than willing to be “Plan B” if Pompeo and I failed.

  We met with Trump on Monday, July 2, and it turned out to be easier and shorter than I expected. We explained the logic of not taking on more battles than we could handle, given the importance of Kavanaugh’s nomination, and urged that we simply continue pushing for other NATO members to get their defense spending to the 2-percent-of-GDP level. Trump agreed without really debating. However, over the next several days, he asked me again why we just didn’t withdraw from NATO entirely, precisely what we had tried to prevent. Clearly, our work was still cut out for us. One step I took to reduce the likelihood of a confrontation with our allies in Brussels, and thus reduce the possibility that Trump might deliver on the prospect of withdrawing from NATO, was to accelerate negotiations to reach agreement on the inevitable final communiqué. Yet another communiqué that no one would read, even a week after it was agreed as a possible flash point! I stressed to Hutchison that we should finalize the communiqué before leaders even arrived in Brussels to minimize the chances of another G7 debacle. This was new to NATO, and I saw that it caused extensive grumbling from those, like France, who—quelle surprise!—profited from strong-arming others near the end of international meetings with that most-dreaded diplomatic threat: agree with us or there will be no final communiqué! I would always welcome that outcome, but it required a considerable attitude adjustment for NATO to wrap up the final document in advance. We succeeded, but only after ceaseless aggravation.

  In the meantime, on Monday, July 9, Trump began tweeting:

  The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable. While these countries have been increasing their contributions since I took office, they must do much more. Germany is at 1%, the US is at 4%, and NATO benefits…

  …Europe far more than it does the U.S. By some accounts, the U.S. is paying for 90% of NATO, with many countries nowhere close to their 2% commitment. On top of this the European Union has a Trade Surplus of $151 Million with the U.S., with big Trade Barriers on U.S. goods. NO!

  These tweets repeated what Trump had said to Stoltenberg and others, but it was the first time many saw them stated so publicly. More were coming.

  We departed on Marine One for Andrews early Tuesday morning, with Trump exuberant about the Kavanaugh nomination the day before. The family was right from “central casting,” said Trump. Just before boarding the helicopter, Trump spoke with the assembled press, as he regularly did in such circumstances, noting that with all the turmoil in NATO and the United Kingdom, his meeting with Putin “may be the easiest of them all. Who would think?”5 In many conversations with Trump during the flight, however, I could see he was unhappy for some reason. We landed, and he rode with the three US Ambassadors in Brussels (one to Belgium, one to the EU, and one to NATO) in the Beast to the residence of our bilateral Ambassador to Belgium, where he was staying. In the car, he blasted Hutchison for her Sunday talk show interviews on NATO, saying she sounded like an Ambassador from the Obama Administration. He then rolled on to inadequate spending by US NATO allies and unfair trade deficits with the EU. I wasn’t in the Beast, but I could recite the script from memory. It was not an auspicious start.

  On Wednesday morning, I went to pre-brief Trump before breakfast with Stoltenberg and his advisors. Trump entered a small dining room on the residence’s second floor, where Mattis, Pompeo, Kelly, Hutchison, and I waited, and said, “I know I don’t have much support in this room.” He then proceeded to rip NATO. It wasn’t much of a briefing. Stoltenberg arrived, the press entered the breakfast room, and Trump riffed away: “Many [NATO allies] owe us a tremendous amount of money. This has gone on for decades.” Stoltenberg explained the nearly $40 billion of annual increases in NATO member-country defense spending since Trump had taken office. Trump rolled on: “It’s very sad when Germany makes a massive oil-and-gas deal with Russia. We’re protecting all of these countries, and they make a pipeline deal. We’re supposed to protect you, and yet you’re paying all this money to Russia… Germany is totally controlled by Russia. Germany pays a little over one percent, we pay over four percent. This has been going on for decades… We’re going to have to do something, because we’re not going to put up with it. Germany is captured by Russia.”6

  Stoltenberg tried to start over after the press left by saying he was glad Trump was in Brussels. Trump was unappeased, saying that even the increases in NATO member defense spending that had been achieved were a joke. He was very unhappy about NATO and very unhappy with the European Union. He complained, yet again, about the new NATO headquarters building, the funds for which could have been spent on tanks—a fair point, like many points Trump made, important but often overwhelmed by the tsunami of words. He later asked why NATO hadn’t built a $500 million bunker rather than the headquarters, which he called a target rather than a headquarters, which one tank could destroy. NATO, he marched on, was very important to Europe, but its value to the US was less apparent. He was one hundred percent for NATO, but America paid more than was fair. Stoltenberg tried occasionally to break in to answer, but he never got far. Nor was the EU spared, as Trump criticized Jean Claude Juncker [President of the European Commission] as a vicious man who hated the United States desperately. Juncker, said Trump, sets the NATO budget, although he did not describe how that was accomplished. Trump stressed again that he wanted to decrease rather than increase US payments to the same level as Germany’s, as they had previously discussed in their recent telephone call. Trump reaffirmed his personal friendship with Stoltenberg but complained again that everyone knew we were being taken advantage of, paying more in every way, which wasn’t going to continue. At this point, Mattis tried to say a few words defending NATO, but Trump swatted him away.

  On Trump rolled, asking why we should enter World War III on behalf of some country not paying its dues, like Macedonia, which he then acknowledged didn’t bother him as much as Germany, a wealthy country not paying enough. He complained about his own advisors, saying we didn’t understand the problem, even though he told us the truth. Trump clearly believed that the only way the allies would spend more is if they thought the United States was leaving, which didn’t bother him, because he didn’t think NATO was good for America. Stoltenberg tried again, but Trump continued to say that too many NATO members were not paying, and repeated his fear of the United States entering World War III on behalf of one of them. Continuing on the theme, he asked why the United States should protect such countries, like Germany, and thereby bear a disprop
ortionate share of NATO expenditures. He repeatedly asked why the United States should pay, complaining that the allies laughed behind our backs when the United States was absent, mocking how stupid we were. Then we were on to Ukraine and the Crimea, with Trump asking if Russia hadn’t spent a lot of money in Crimea, which he wouldn’t have allowed them to do, although Obama had. Why should the US risk war Trump wondered, and Stoltenberg answered that Ukraine was different, since it was not a NATO country. Trump responded that Ukraine was very corrupt, and the breakfast finally came to a close. He reassured Stoltenberg that he was with him one hundred percent, noting that he had supported extending Stoltenberg’s term as NATO Secretary General. Still, the other allies had to pay up now, not over a thirty-year period, and in any case our spending was going down to Germany’s level. By this point, Mattis had turned to me and said quietly, “this is getting pretty silly,” shortly after which Trump said he was telling General Mattis not to spend more on NATO. Stoltenberg said in conclusion that we agreed on the fundamental message.

  Quite the breakfast. Could the day get worse? Yes. We motorcaded to NATO headquarters, my first visit. It certainly was architecturally flamboyant, probably reflected in its cost. The summit’s opening ceremony came first, and, due to the vagaries of seating assignments, I was next to Jeremy Hunt, in his second day on the job as UK Foreign Secretary. Watching the leaders mix and mingle for the de rigueur “family photo,” he said, “Some leaders have small talk, and some don’t; you can tell in a minute who they are,” an interesting insight. After the ceremony, the first session of the North Atlantic Council began with Stoltenberg declaring the draft communiqué and other summit documents adopted, a small point here, unlike the G7, due to prior planning. Thank you. Trump was the first speaker. His opening statement, carefully crafted by his speechwriters, with assistance from yours truly and others, was pretty plain vanilla, intentionally so.