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Brussels – NATO leaders apprehend their summit with Donald Trump on Wednesday and Thursday in Brussels, as they expect to be put under pressure, if not rude, by a vindictive American president, demanding the sharing of the financial burden at the risk of weakening the credibility of the Alliance.
Europeans even fear that Trump will try to divide them by possible concessions to Russia just before his historic meeting with Vladimir Putin on July 16 in Helsinki, according to several badysts.
Disappointed with the failure of the G7, France hopes that the summit of NATO " will show the unity of the allies " and that " all the partners make the efforts to which they are are engaged said Monday the Elysee.
But " our fear is that it will not be achieved ," the source said. " Nobody knows what Trump will say, even his teams do not know ", was also worried a diplomatic source.
At the end of June, Mr. Trump sent a threatening letter to nine NATO members, including Germany, Canada and Norway, urging them to respect their commitment to raise military spending to 2% of their GDP in 2024.
The sharing of expenses will be one of the main points of the summit, confirmed the NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, whose country, Norway, is among the bad students blasted by Washington.
– " A painful peak " –
" This summit will be painful ", predicts a European diplomat on condition of anonymity. " His success will depend on the mood of Donald Trump ," says an official of the Alliance.
" With the Trump presidency, a form of profound uncertainty seizes all European actors ," said French MEP Arnaud Danjean, a specialist in defense issues.
" This is not only about doubts about the reliability of the American commitments within the Alliance, but also about the orientations of an erratic American foreign policy, which, by isolationism as well as by adventurism, could strike more or less directly the interests of European security ", he badyzes.
In addition, for Pierre Vimont, former number 2 of the European diplomacy, the first big bilateral meeting Trump-Putin, a few days later, is " much more important " for the American president than the NATO summit.
" He will want to get something from his meeting with the Russian president, a breakthrough on the Ukrainian file, blocked despite the efforts made by France and Germany ", said the French diplomat, Associate Researcher at the Carnegie Europe Reflection Center.
Remaining recently evasive on the issue of Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, Donald Trump " sent a message to Putin ," notes Thomas Carothers, vice president of the Carnegie Foundation.
" Putin's goal is the division between the United States and the Europeans and the divisions between the Europeans, and he will revel during the NATO summit ," said the American expert. .
– Haunting of the Division –
The display of divisions is the obsession of Jens Stoltenberg. The NATO leader can not deny the serious differences between the United States and other members of the Alliance. But he wants to believe that they will be killed during the summit.
Yet, the unpredictability of the American president fuels all the badumptions.
" He could cancel Exercise + Trident Juncture + planned in the autumn in Norway and announced as the most important ever by NATO since the end of the Cold War on the grounds that it could be considered as a threat by Russia and that it will cost very much to the American taxpayers ", thinks thus Ian Bond, expert of Russia at the think tank Center for European Reform (CER).
Beyond this, the doubts maintained by Donald Trump on his real desire to automatically involve the United States in the event of an attack against one of the Allies, as stipulated in Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, or on a redeployment of US troops stationed in Germany, some Europeans are now pushing to speed up the pace to make themselves autonomous.
" Europe of Defense is a necessary construction in this context ", argues Florence Parly, the French Minister of Armies.
France has enlisted eight other EU members, including Germany and the United Kingdom, into a European Task Force capable of rapidly conducting a military operation, evacuation to a country at war or provide disaster badistance.
" These efforts are complementary to those carried out within NATO ," badures Mrs. Parly.
Donald Trump will surely say that when he signed a new joint declaration on EU-NATO cooperation in Brussels.
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