NATO Summit Turns To Afghanistan

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Poland's President Andrzej Duda, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, U.S. President Donald Trump, Portugal's Prime Minister Antonio Costa, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pose for a group photo in the park of the Cinquantenaire, during a NATO Summit, in central Brussels, Belgium July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman

Reuters: After Trump's spending demands, NATO summit turns to Afghanistan

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO leaders will try on Thursday to move beyond U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for higher defense spending, and focus on ending the long war in Afghanistan, in the second day of a summit in Brussels underscored by transatlantic tensions.

On a trip that will also take Trump to Britain and to Helsinki to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the president spent the first day of the NATO summit lambasting allies for failing to spend the targeted 2 percent of GDP on defense and accused Germany of being a prisoner to Russian energy.

Trump, in a late-night post on Twitter, wrote: “Billions of additional dollars are being spent by NATO countries since my visit last year, at my request, but it isn’t nearly enough. U.S. spends too much.”

It followed an uncomfortable first round at the summit where anxious Western allies were subjected to the U.S. president’s “America first” approach. His comment that Germany was controlled by Russia earned a rebuke from Berlin.

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WNU Editor:  I expect very little from NATO on what needs to be done in Afghanistan.