BRUSSELS: President Donald Trump’s brand new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began talks at NATO on Friday planning to hammer home one of his boss’s oldest themes — demanding that other alliance members pay their way.
America’s top diplomat told NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg he had “hopped on a plane and come straight here” as the pair met at the start of a gathering of foreign ministers at alliance headquarters in Brussels.
Welcoming the former CIA director, Stoltenberg said the fact Pompeo had come so soon after being sworn in on Thursday was a “great expression of the importance of the alliance”.
But the message Pompeo brings from Washington will not be so warmly welcomed by all NATO members. Trump wants other member states to increase their military spending and thus reduce the burden placed on the alliance’s biggest member.
Some allies, most notably wealthy Germany, are reluctant to meet a commitment made at a NATO summit in Wales in September 2016 to spend two per cent of their GDP on defence.
Trump has repeatedly declared this to be tantamount to countries not paying their dues, and US officials said Pompeo would carry this message to Brussels, as his predecessor Rex Tillerson had done.
As he arrived, Germany’s new Foreign Minister Heiko Maas stressed the contribution Berlin was making to humanitarian work in Syria and to Iraq.
“Germany plays a very important role,” Maas said.
Earlier this month, welcoming the presidents of the three Baltic republics on Nato’s eastern flank with Russia, Trump praised them over the older partner states in western Europe.
Friday’s talks of the 29 foreign ministers — and a defence ministers’ meeting in May — will prepare the way for a full summit in July that could see the US clash with Germany and others.
To support increased spending, Pompeo will stress the threat posed by Russia, which a senior US official said has “demonstrated its ability to threaten, coerce, undermine, and even invade its neighbours”.
“We will underscore how important it is for all allies to take this threat seriously, to honour their commitment from the Wales summit,” he added.
“Six countries in NATO currently do so, nine have submitted credible plans for doing so, and it’s time for the other 13 members of the alliance to step up, and especially Germany, NATO’S largest and wealthiest European member state.”
As the ministers meet in Brussels, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be in Washington for a much-anticipated meeting with Trump, hard on the heels of French President Emmanuel Macron’s triumphant three-day state visit.
France and Britain took part in a recent US-led punishment strike against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal, but Germany has not joined recent missions and Merkel’s meeting will be less warm than Macron’s.
The senior US official said Germany spends only 1.24 per cent of its GDP on defence and plans only to increase this to 1.25 per cent by 2021.
Russia will be top of the agenda at Friday’s meeting, which will be the first gathering of Nato foreign ministers since the poisoning of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Britain and the last before the alliance leaves its Cold War-era headquarters for new premises.