From his big white bird did the President descend upon his dreading European hosts, looking much like natives waiting to be slaughtered or ravished. As Donald Trump pushed his way through NATO members (the Montenegrin prime minister, for one, felt his forceful shove), representatives shot glances of discomfort and bemusement. In a refreshing blast of brutishness, the Ugly American, made flesh in the incarnation of Trump, was explaining, even hectoring Washington’s allies.
The central irritation was one about, as it always tends to be, money. In the rueful words of Karen Attiah’s penned piece for the Washington Post, “Trump was the party guest whom no one really wants to deal with but has to – because he has more money than anyone else.”
Muscular, military buffoonery comes at a high price, usually to the filched tax payer. But the issue of where the money goes is almost as important as whether you have it. The largest military power on earth was tired about having to provide a shield of defence without some local compensation, and here, its President was claiming some form of fictional proprietorship.
Why, wondered Trump, were NATO members not pulling their military weight not so much over their defence as the obligations owed to the US? Back payments were due, and The Donald was under the erroneous impression that they had to be paid directly to the US.
“Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defence than all other NATO…