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President Trump joined other leaders for a “family photo” on Wednesday as the NATO summit meeting began in Brussels. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
Right Now: Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected President Trump’s claims about Germany’s energy policy.
• President Trump is in Brussels as part of a seven-day, three-nation European trip that highlights the ways he has utterly
transformed United States foreign policy.
• Mr. Trump got off to a confrontational start on Wednesday, disparaging NATO and telling the alliance’s secretary general that other nations must spend more on defense. He also accused Germany of being “captive of Russia” on energy.
• The president has upended generations of American diplomacy, antagonizing and belittling traditional allies over issues like defense and trade, while refraining from criticizing Russia, traditionally an adversary.
• After the NATO summit meeting, he is to travel to Britain and then to Finland
to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Mr. Trump kicked off his meetings on a contentious note, calling allies “delinquent” for failing to spend enough on their own defense and attacking Germany as a “captive” of Russia because of its energy dealings.
“Many countries are not paying what they should, and, frankly, many countries owe us a tremendous amount of money from many years back,” Mr. Trump said at a breakfast with Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, at the residence of the American ambassador to Belgium. “They’re delinquent, as far as I’m concerned, because the United States has had to pay for them.”
He singled out Germany for particularly sharp criticism, saying the country was “totally controlled by Russia” because of its dependence on Russian natural gas. The United States spends heavily to defend Germany from Russia, he said, and “Germany goes out and pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.”
He criticized Germany for giving approval for Gazprom, the Russian energy titan, to construct the Nord Stream 2 pipeline through its waters, a $10 billion project.
“Germany is a captive of Russia” because of the oil and gas issue, Mr. Trump said. “I think it’s something that NATO has to look at.”
Mr. Stoltenberg countered that “despite differences,” NATO was about uniting “to protect and defend each other.”
But Mr. Trump shrugged off the collective defense principle, saying, “How can you be together when a country is getting its energy from the country you want protection against?” —
Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Merkel reminds people that she knows what Russian control looks like
In her typical polite-but-firm fashion, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany showed no sign of irritation at President Trump’s remarks. Credit Paul Hanna/Reuters
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany offered a reminder that she learned firsthand, growing up in the former East Germany, what it means to be a “captive” nation. Modern Germany, she said, is not one.
“I have experienced myself how a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union,” she told reporters who asked about Mr. Trump’s comments as she entered the NATO leaders’ meeting. Now “united in freedom,” she said, Germany “can make our own policies and make our own decisions.”
In her typical polite-but-firm fashion, Ms. Merkel showed no sign of irritation at Mr. Trump’s remarks and did not say directly that he was wrong, but she made her position clear.
She noted that Germany was the second-largest provider of NATO troops, after the United States, and had thousands of troops supporting the American-led effort in Afghanistan.
“Germany does a lot for NATO,” she said, adding that, in the process, Germans “defend the interests of the United States.”