WASHINGTON — As he heads into this week’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit meeting, President Trump is widely seen as a wild card among allies who are seeking to show solidarity against Russian threats.
Instead, the president is fixated instead on his NATO spending grievances and primed for a bitter confrontation that could further isolate the United States.
Trump’s increasingly strident complaints about NATO and apparent willingness to give the benefit of the doubt to President Vladimir Putin of Russia have worried the United States’ staunchest allies — and some within his own administration — and threaten to transform the gathering in Brussels into a showcase for dysfunction rather than unity.
The concerns are particularly acute against the backdrop of Trump’s planned meeting with Putin next week in Helsinki, raising the prospect that he will warmly embrace the authoritarian leader of a US adversary just after alienating allies.
Trump is to arrive in Brussels on Tuesday, the eve of the NATO meeting, at which US presidents are normally viewed as pivotal leaders and consensus builders.
But in recent days, he has argued that the United States is being exploited by Europe, and has hinted that he might instead play the role of agitator and spoiler, sowing disagreement among allies that would play into Putin’s hands.
“The biggest deliverable of any of these summits is solidarity and sending a clear message to countries like Russia that the alliance isn’t going to be divided,’’ said Derek Chollet, the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “So there is quite a bit of concern about a blowup.’’
“If you’re Vladimir Putin, and one of your core goals is to divide the United States from Europe and to show that the NATO alliance is a paper tiger, you’re feeling pretty good right now,’’ Chollet said.
Trump’s advisers hope to avoid a blowup akin to the one he provoked at the Group of 7 summit meeting in Quebec last month, and have pointed Trump to evidence that NATO allies have responded to his aggressive pressure by increasing their own military spending.
But in private conversations, the president has been dismissive of the military alliance and the European Union, suggesting that both entities exist to take advantage of the United States and strip it of capital.
On Monday, Trump tweeted that the United States was “spending far more on NATO than any other country.’’ He said the situation “is not fair, nor is it acceptable,’’ and he said that it “benefits Europe far more than it does the U.S.’’
At a campaign rally last week in Great Falls, Mont., Trump told thousands of supporters, “We’re the schmucks are paying for the whole thing.’’
“I’ll see NATO and I’ll tell NATO, ‘You’ve got to start paying your bills,'’’ Trump said at the rally. “The United States is not going to take care of everything.’’
He also said he had suggested to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany that the tens of thousands of US troops stationed in her country might not be worth the expenditure — an opinion he has shared privately with advisers at the White House, according to one person familiar with the discussions.
