UGLY AMERICAN - President Trump Turned International Diplomacy Into A Fistfight - And Lost
President Trump’s performance in the last leg of his first international trip has European leaders fuming—and American diplomats likening him to a ‘drunk tourist.’
SCOTT BIXBY
05.28.17 7:41 PM ET
During his inaugural international trip as the leader of the free world, President Donald Trump learned the problem with first impressions—you only get to make one.
After indulging the royals of Saudi Arabia with assurances that he was “not here to lecture”—in exchange for gold chains and glowing orbs—Trump took a much harder stance toward major Western democracies, distancing his administration politically and, in some cases, personally from some of America’s oldest and closest allies. The concept of diplomacy as a pursuit of mutually beneficial terms for both parties stood in stark relief against Trump’s worldview, which divvies up the world into two groups: winners and losers.
In a meeting with European Union leaders on Wednesday, Trump reportedly dubbed the Germans “bad, very bad” and decried current U.S. military commitments to Europe as “unfair to the people and taxpayers of the United States.” During a ceremony at NATO headquarters in Brussels meant to dedicate a memorial to the alliance’s strength in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Trump scolded NATO member nations for “not paying what they should be paying.”
Rather than speak to leaders from the 28 nations of which NATO is comprised, Trump instead, it appeared, spoke to his base. Trump declined to recommit the United States to upholding Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which stipulates that an attack against one member nation is considered an attack against all. The omission—later downplayed by White House press secretary Sean Spicer—underscores threats Trump made as a candidate to treat Article 5 as conditional, based on whether a country was spending enough on defense.
The only form of offensive action Trump seemed to endorse during the event, it seemed, was shoving the prime minister of Montenegro.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/05/28/president-trump-turned-international-diplomacy-into-a-fistfightand-lost
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