NATO Summit first day overshadowed by tensions between allies

If Trump complains to NATO about U.S. military spending why does he want such a huge increase

The heads of member states attend the opening ceremony of the 2018 NATO summit in Belgium on Wednesday

Patty Aguilar | 12 July, 2018, 07:26

Under NATO rules, countries with territorial conflicts can not join the Western alliance and neither country is expected to progress in membership talks.

Over breakfast, the United States president was unrestrained in his criticism of Germany, saying the country was reliant on Russian gas imports and citing some false figures along the way.

Germany is not a captive of anyone, neither Russian Federation nor the US, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said in response to US President Donald Trump's description of his country as a "captive" of Russian Federation.

But the sweeping nature of this claim inspired us to take another look at one of the president's oft-repeated complaints.

Though the insult will hardly engender warmth from German chancellor Angela Merkel, who Trump is due to meet later today, German defense minister Ursula von der Leyen seemed relatively unperturbed.

Germany's energy relationship with Russian Federation has long frustrated Washington and Eastern Europe, who fear that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that bypasses the Baltic nations and Poland could be used to cut them off from crucial energy supplies. What I hope he'll say is 'having said all that, my goal is to make North Atlantic Treaty Organisation stronger.' And the only way it gets stronger is for us to up our game and for people to match the commitments they've made.

Former secretary of state John Kerry blasted President Trump's criticism of Germany in a lengthy statement on Wednesday morning as "strange", "counterproductive", and "disgraceful".

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"I think these countries have to step it up, not over a 10 year period, they have to step it up immediately".

"I think once the trend started changing in 2014, that created momentum even before he became president", says American University's Martin. "So we're going to have a meeting on that", Trump said, describing the situation as "disproportionate and not fair to the taxpayers of the United States". He stayed close to members of his delegation, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, before eventually engaging in a brief round of backslapping with others, including again May, before taking his seat. In 2017, the U.S.is estimated to have spent more than 69% of the cumulative total.

Downing Street made clear that she expected Trump to bring up the novichok attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, which claimed the life of British woman Dawn Sturgess this week, at his summit with Putin in Helsinki on Monday.

President Donald Trump harshly criticized Germany on July 11 for buying vast amounts of energy from Russian Federation while relying on the United States to deter the threat of Moscow's threatening geopolitical ambitions. "This is serious. My task is to try to minimise the negative impact on NATO", Stoltenberg told a forum in the margins of the summit.

Trump's moodiness, along with his unpredictability and often-treacherous behavior towards his allies, makes clear that he views military security as a commodity that can be sold.

'President Trump, who spoke first, raised the issue not only to achieve 2 percent, today, but a new barrier - 4 percent, ' Bulgarian President Rumen Radev told reporters, according to the wire service Reuters. "It's about $2.8 billion and the US pays 22 percent of that, not 90 percent".

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NATO Summit first day overshadowed by tensions between allies

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