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Widespread shoe polish in Washington. Donald, the little father of the Alliance

(B2) During the past 48 hours, in Washington, the Foreign Ministers of the member countries of the Atlantic Alliance have gathered around the same message: NATO is a marvelous instrument, the Atlantic Alliance is necessary, and thanks to the impetus of Donald Trump, we have made a great leap forward...

Jens Stoltenberg and Donald Trump in a manly handshake (credit: US - White House)

Thanks to Donald, what a long way!

This last point is not pure sycophancy. It is a question of demonstrating to the current host of the White House that the efforts of the Allies to increase their defense spending and achieve the objective of 2% of GDP are essentially due to his action, and not to that of his predecessor, Barak Obama. We must forget that it was the Democrat, enemy of Donald Trump, who initiated or supported the new policy adopted at the Wales summit, with the key, a 'stop' to the reduction of defense budgets and a schedule for their ascent.

The trace of Obama, carefully erased

Faithful to this tactic, the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, carefully erased from his speech (to the US Congress) any reference to Barack Obama, and even to the Wales summit, to pay tribute only to current president: NATO allies need to spend more on defence. This was a very clear message from President Trump. And this message had a real impact (1).

The fear of a slammed door

This attention has a concrete objective: to prevent Donald's fidgety finger from skidding in the direction of his tweeter to unleash a volley of insults or negative remarks on one or the other. Everyone remembers the painful moments of the last summit of the Alliance, in July in Brussels, where the former businessman, who became president, had sown disorder and amazement in this usually more civilized assembly (2) . At the time, the fear of seeing him slam the door, or even of denouncing the Treaty of the Atlantic Alliance, was so real that, as a matter of urgency, the organization's lawyers had been summoned to rummage through the original text of the Treaty — and the other international provisions — to see what the exact conditions of a USexit were...

Effective pump polish

This threat seems remote today, thanks to this general pump-shine effort by the American president. The Secretary General " has good political sense. He pays tribute to the work of Donald Trump says a diplomat working for the alliance. " It's effective. This empire of signs has extinguished threats to an exit from NATO ».

(Nicolas Gros-Verheyde)

(1) We seem to be at the time of the Soviet Union of the great days, when we carefully erased any reference to the former leader...

(2) Read about the Brussels summit:

Nicolas Gros Verheyde

Chief editor of the B2 site. Graduated in European law from the University of Paris I Pantheon Sorbonne and listener to the 65th session of the IHEDN (Institut des Hautes Etudes de la Défense Nationale. Journalist since 1989, founded B2 - Bruxelles2 in 2008. EU/NATO correspondent in Brussels for Sud-Ouest (previously West-France and France-Soir).

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