After Trump G-7 blast, tension hangs over July NATO meeting, efforts to deter Russia

WASHINGTON — President Trump's whirlwind week of diplomacy — marked by conflict with allies and warmth toward enemies – has raised the stakes for another high-profile summit next month, when NATO leaders plan to meet in Brussels to approve long-sought measures to deter Russian aggression.

While Trump's defense secretary, Jim Mattis, just last week affirmed America's commitment to the trans-Atlantic defense pact, Trump followed those assurances by battling and belittling some of the alliance's most important members and offering conciliatory gestures to North Korea and Russia – one of Europe's greatest threats.

Trump's swings have set the foreign-relations establishment on edge as it anticipates NATO's next summit in July, when he is expected to again come face-to-face with the U.S. partners he just spurned at an economic summit, including Canada's Justin Trudeau, France's Emmanuel Macron, and Germany's Angela Merkel.

Together with other allies they are slated to finalize long-sought NATO reforms intended to deter Russia and fight terrorism — but lingering tension now hangs over the meeting.

"The main goal for the trans-Atlantic alliance vis-a-vis Russia and China is projecting unity, and they're incapable of doing that right now," said Julie Smith, who worked on NATO and Europe policy in the Obama administration's Defense Department.

Last week, Trump called for bringing Russia back into the G-7, a coalition of economic powers — defying the European allies who, along with President Barack Obama, ousted Moscow as punishment for its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Trump's pronouncement came on the very same day Mattis was meeting with NATO defense ministers in Belgium, promoting togetherness and steps to respond to Russia's military aggression and interference in U.S. and European elections.

"The unity of the alliance is probably the most emblematic factor of NATO," Mattis, a former NATO commander, told reporters en route to the Brussels conference.

His meetings there went smoothly and were marked by pledges of cooperation, but the G-7 summit ended the next day in discord and personal insults, with Trump refusing to sign a joint statement and tweeting that Trudeau is "weak." A Trump aide went on TV to say "there is a special place in hell" for the Canadian leader. (The aide later apologized.)

In private at the G-7, Trump echoed Russian talking points justifying its incursion into Ukraine, BuzzFeed reported Thursday.

And on Friday Trump suggested he might meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin this summer, while blaming Obama for the invasion of Ukraine in 2014.

"There's nothing more damaging than a display … along the lines of what we saw at the G-7," said Derek Chollet, a former assistant secretary of defense who managed Europe and NATO policy under two Obama secretaries of defense. "What the Russians want is a NATO alliance that's divided."

Mattis argued that the economic dispute spurred by Trump's tariffs and Europe's response won't upend decades of military coordination.

Instead, he said, fair trade will strengthen the U.S. economy, and therefore security.

"I have never seen in history, one country that maintained its military strength that did not keep its economic house in order," Mattis said. "Not one."

NATO's plans include steps to streamline decision-making among the alliance's democracies, so they can react to threats more quickly; smoothing bureaucratic and technical wrinkles – such as customs regulations and infrastructure kinks – that slow troop movements, particularly to Eastern Europe, where Russia looms largest; and increasing the readiness of military forces, so that 30 battalions, 30 air squadrons, and 30 battleships can be operational within 30 days' notice.

The alliance also plans to open new command centers in Germany, to facilitate the movement of forces across Europe, and Norfolk, Va., to monitor the Atlantic, where Russian submarines have been increasingly aggressive.

Those plans have been in the works for years, and are unlikely to be derailed now, even if Trump remains at odds with allies, said Christopher Skaluba, who worked on Department of Defense NATO policy during the Bush and Obama administrations. While Trump has battled U.S. allies on trade, his top cabinet officials have consistently praised the American security partnership with Europe, and his administration has increased funding for the U.S. military presence there.

"Trump clearly has a strange preoccupation with Putin, but with respect to the policy measures it really hasn't had much effect on the steps [NATO is] taking," Skaluba said.

Chollet, however, saw a potent parallel in Trump's antagonism about unfair trade and NATO, where the president has berated allies for spending too little on defense.

"In the eyes of Donald Trump, it's all the same: Allies are ripping us off," said Chollet, a visiting fellow at Penn's Perry World House.

NATO's reforms are a striking illustration of how Russia has returned to prominence as a major threat – decades after the end of the Cold War.

For years, NATO had turned its focus to fighting terrorism and hoped Russia would join the Western democratic order. In 2010 — the same year soccer authorities awarded Russia the right to host the World Cup that began Thursday — NATO reduced its personnel in Europe.

"We did so thinking that Russia was actually a partner, and we did so at a time when we thought, we were certain, that we were stronger in every domain, fighting domain. We believed that we had the best technology — and we did — and thought that any conflict would be slow to develop," Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, head of the U.S. and NATO commands in Europe, told reporters in Brussels this month. "None of those things are true today."

When Russian forces rolled into Ukraine and annexed Crimea in 2014, hopes for cooperation were shattered.

Suddenly, NATO had to refresh the Cold War posture "that we thought we had swept into the dustbin of history," Smith, the Obama administration official, said.

Still, the combined military muscle in Europe is far more powerful than Putin's, which is why Moscow has turned to sowing domestic discord and disrupting elections, hoping to fracture the Western alliance,  according to Mitchell Orenstein, a Russia scholar at Penn.

"The interesting thing about deterring Russia is that with united action, it's really not that difficult," Orenstein said.

The last week, however, has further complicated that goal. Now, a normally routine meeting set for next month is charged by friction.