WHAT KIND OF WORLD DOES TRUMP WANT? / THE FINANCIAL TIMES BIG READ

What kind of world does Trump want?

Global leaders struggle to understand the impulses and stratagems of the US president

James Politi in Washington and Steff Chávez in The Hague

President Donald Trump talks to reporters on board Air Force One after leaving the G7 leaders’ summit in Canada earlier this month, before embarking on a string of momentous decisions © Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

America’s transatlantic allies had reason to be worried ahead of the Nato summit at The Hague this week.

After a manic few days for US foreign policy that included American air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the US president seemed in no mood for pleasantries.

As he left the White House for the trip to the Netherlands, his frustration at the state of negotiations with Israel and Iran boiled over into profanity. 

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” Trump told reporters.

Yet the president defied worries at the summit, allowing the pact that has underpinned European security since the dawn of the cold war to live on. 

“When I was around that table, it was a nice group of people,” Trump said during his closing press conference in The Hague on Wednesday. 

“It’s not a rip-off. 

And we are here to help them protect their [countries],” he said. 

Trump was satisfied because he has finally secured pledges by nearly all Nato members to sharply increase their defence spending, the issue over which he has berated and threatened them since early in his first term. 

His mood was also lifted by the heavy dose of flattery he received from Mark Rutte, the former Dutch prime minister and new head of Nato, including for the Iranian operation.

Trump, seated next to Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a dinner during this week’s Nato summit in The Hague. The US president secured pledges by nearly all alliance members to sharply increase their defence spending © POOL/AFP via Getty Images

But the bonhomie at Nato was so hard won that it exposed just how gripped the world is by the whims of the man in the White House, and Trump’s boisterous and volatile foreign policy tactics. 

Just this month, the US president left a G7 summit in Canada early in dramatic fashion to return to Washington to consider strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, proceeded with the military action within five days and then promptly brokered a ceasefire deal in a bid to end the hostilities.

He arrived at the Nato summit arguing that the mutual defence pact at the heart of the alliance was “open to interpretation”, causing a level of panic among some delegations. 

But Trump said little more to undermine the alliance in the Netherlands. 

Both internationally and domestically, officials and investors are left struggling to understand if he is an interventionist or a peacemaker, or if there is any guiding theory to his actions and rhetoric.

The president seems to exhibit no “particular ideological agenda” except self-interest, says Julian Zelizer, a political history professor at Princeton University. 

“When he sees an opportunity for himself and for his power, he takes it.”

Foreign capitals are also trying to calculate whether resistance to Trump may be the best option to safeguard their economies and interests despite the obvious risks, or if acquiescence might be the safer bet. 

But at some point they all know they will have to grapple with Trump’s gyrations and often irascible demands, sometimes transmitted via social media.

“The core of Trump’s foreign policy is unpredictability,” says Ray Takeyh, a former state department senior adviser on Iran, now at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

“It almost doesn’t matter if he is staffed by internationalists, restrainers or isolationists. 

He will do what he wants and others have to adjust.”  

Trump’s decision to order air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend was still very much at the top of mind when he arrived in the Netherlands on Tuesday for the Nato summit.

The US president and his top national security advisers had managed to cobble together a tenuous truce between Israel and Iran on the eve of his trip, easing some of the fears of regional escalation and conflagration in the Middle East.

“We think it’s over. 

I don’t think they’re going to be going back at each other,” Trump said in the Netherlands. 

“We’ve also reasserted the credibility of American deterrence, which is like no other,” he added. 

But while the diplomatic and military shockwaves from the US air strikes were still reverberating around the world, and the president even invoked the possibility of “regime change” in Tehran, he was quickly placed on the defensive by revelations that the initial assessment by military intelligence found that the air strikes set back Iran’s nuclear programme by only a few months, not years. 

Trump was quick to dismiss the conclusions, which were discordant with his claim that the nuclear facilities had been “obliterated,” then proceeded to attack the media outlets including CNN and the New York Times who first reported on the findings. 

“For Trump, The Hague summit was about two things: a ‘Victory in Europe’ Day over defence spending and a fight with the US media over the status of the Iranian nuclear programme,” says Joel Linnainmäki, research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, a think-tank. 

“He was mostly focused on the latter. 

The core concern of Trump’s foreign policy is how things appear to his base back home.” 

But the furore obscured another unfolding shift in Trump’s Iran policy: in the wake of the ceasefire, the US said it was willing to relaunch negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme as early as next week — which could potentially lead to a loosening of sanctions on the country.

Even the hawkish Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican senator who is a close ally of Trump, seemed unsettled by the possibility. 

“I don’t want people to think the problem is over, because it’s not,” he told reporters. 

Yet despite the whiplash, many Republicans think Trump’s Iran strategy has been successful so far.

“We very well may have created the conditions for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, and time will tell,” says Heather Nauert, a former state department official in Trump’s first term. 

“But we have got them to a place where they’re willing to sit down and have what I hope will be a serious conversation about the future of their country.”

But to critics of the White House, it has all seemed haphazard. 

“The administration seems to be making it up as they go along, with senior officials never knowing from one minute to the next whether what they say or do will be undermined by a presidential tweet,” says Jim Townsend, former US deputy assistant secretary of defence for European and Nato policy. 

A successful Nato summit had by no means been a foregone conclusion.

Beyond Trump’s questioning of Article 5, the mutual defence treaty, allies were braced for the potential Trump fallout from Spain’s last-minute opt out from the soon-to-be-agreed target of 5 per cent of GDP for defence spending, which threatened to torpedo it all. 

“Spain’s not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them,” Trump said on Air Force One. 

As Trump dined with the king and queen of the Netherlands and other world leaders on Tuesday night, the officials, diplomats and security experts at parties and events on the sidelines of the summit were preparing themselves for just how badly the following day would go.

Europeans “need to do everything we can to keep the US” onboard, even if that means having to “dance like monkeys” for Trump, said one foreign policy adviser to a Nato member government. 

Praise from Rutte, who even called Trump “daddy” during a bilateral meeting, helped win him over.

“Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world,” Rutte wrote in a text message to the president, who then posted it on TruthSocial. 

“You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.” 

Texts from Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte to Trump, who posted them on TruthSocial. Praise from Rutte, who called the president ‘daddy’ during a bilateral meeting, helped to win him over © Donald J. Trump/Truth

In the end, The Hague summit declaration enshrined the commitment by Nato members to spend 5 per cent on defence by 2035, citing “the long- term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security and the persistent threat of terrorism.”

General David Petraeus, who led several US military campaigns in the Middle East, told CNN this week that Trump’s “angry man theory” of diplomacy appeared to be working. 

“I think he has done this very effectively. 

He has expressed his displeasure repeatedly. 

They have clearly taken it very seriously. 

There’s been a lot of soul searching in Europe . . . 

They’re very concerned about [Trump’s] response, and they have taken action as a result, and that is great to see,” he said. 

Spain, however, remained the holdout in refusing to meet the defence spending target. 

The US president had no mercy for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez during his press conference, insisting that he could punish Madrid on trade for not complying as the US and EU try to hash out a deal.

“We’re negotiating with Spain on a trade deal. 

We’re going to make them pay twice as much, and I’m actually serious about that,” Trump said. 

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez holds a press conference at the European Council in Brussels on Thursday. Spain refused to commit to the Nato target on defence spending © AFP via Getty Images

Trade is likely to displace national security in Trump’s attention in coming weeks, with the approach of the July 9 deadline set by Washington for many of America’s trading partners to reach a deal or face higher levies.

After the huge equity market drop and even Treasury sell-off in the aftermath of the president’s steep “liberation day” levies on a string of countries, Trump is under pressure to either extend the deadline or reach deals to avert the higher tariffs.

In defence, too, the success of Trump’s huge geopolitical ventures will be measured by their long-term durability.

“The Iran strike seems to have succeeded, and the Nato allies are committed to paying more,” says Takeyh. 

“The key question is whether these triumphs are shortlived. 

If Iran now develops a bomb surreptitiously and the alliance fractures over issues of burden-sharing then it is a more problematic thing.”