MAKING TRUMP FEEL GOOD
The summit itself was mild on the kind of contentious and detailed coverage discussions which have traditionally bored and angered Trump.
As an alternative, it was diminished to a collection of picture alternatives and speeches during which different leaders lavished reward on Trump. Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda even recommended the alliance ought to repeat Trump’s political motion by adopting the phrase “make NATO nice once more”.
NATO leaders aren’t the one ones attempting this trick. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has had a go at it too. Starmer has made certain that Trump would be the first US president to make a second state go to to the UK. He described the honour in Trump-like phrases: “This has by no means occurred earlier than. It’s so unimaginable. It is going to be historic.”
After Trump introduced international commerce tariffs earlier within the yr, Starmer was the primary chief to provide Trump a much-needed victory by reaching a framework commerce settlement. But it surely labored each methods, with Starmer in a position to land a political victory too.
In his first time period, flattery was additionally seen as a software for use to get Trump onside. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried it in telephone conversations with the US president, calling him a “nice instructor” from whom he discovered “expertise and information”.
Flattery and compliance clearly have their makes use of. Trump is extraordinarily delicate to criticism and inclined to reward, nonetheless hyperbolic and clear it may be. Buttering him up could also be an efficient technique to get him to again off.
But it surely doesn’t obtain a lot else. On the NATO summit, a chance was missed to make progress on problems with actual significance, corresponding to methods to higher assist Ukraine in its warfare towards Russia or to raised coordinate European defence spending.
A summit devoted to the only goal of creating Trump really feel good is one with very restricted goals certainly. All it does is push the troublesome choices ahead for one more day.
