The Crazy Uncle Trump Effect

What does the NATO summit in Ankara tell us about the state of the transatlantic relationship?

Photo by Zulfugar Karimov on Unsplash

Yesterday Paul Krugman argued that Trump huffed and puffed and threatened to blow NATO down but that, in the end, Europeans were unruffled:

Soon after he arrived in Ankara for the NATO Summit, Trump reiterated his demand that Denmark hand him control of Greenland. But reactions were subdued. As far as I can tell, our erstwhile allies are now treating Trump as the senile uncle who says crazy, outrageous things, but shouldn’t be taken seriously….

Europe’s turn away from Trump also reflects plummeting perceptions of his power. At one time the world feared Trump although it never respected him. The silence that met his renewed demand for Greenland shows that the world no longer takes him seriously.

Krugman has a point. It’s true that this week Trump has lusted over Greenland, bashed NATO allies for not assisting with Iran, and threatened to cut off all trade with Spain — and yet the summit ended up going better than expected. At least that was my takeaway from Politico’s Paul McLeary, Victory Jack, and Dasha Burns about what happened in the private portions of the summit:

The president was far more positive on Wednesday, when he gave a final 30-minute speech which left out his desire to annex Greenland or criticize Spain, his latest European punching bag, according to four people, who were granted anonymity to relay details of the private meeting. While there was some criticism, there were also plenty of compliments.

“We want to remain with you,” Trump said, according to a second participant in the meeting.

The shift was a notable about-face for a president who has threatened repeatedly to leave the alliance — and came after European leaders heaped praise on Trump for helping ensure allies boosted their defense spending. But those in attendance weren’t clear what specifically changed his stance.

“It was a bit unexpected, the mood in the room was a lot better than it seemed before,” according to one of the four people. “His mood seems to have swung.”

Trump bragged about the U.S. military’s prowess and thanked leaders from Poland, Germany, the Baltic states and Norway for their contributions to the alliance.

Indeed, Trump’s rhetorical and material support to Ukraine likely mattered more to European members of NATO than his vituperative remarks the day before.

This is a big change from even earlier this year, when, as noted yesterday, European officials were gathering to figure out how to handle a menacing Trump.

So what has changed in the last six months?

Krugman argues that it is due to a shift in perceptions about American power: “Europe’s turn away from Trump also reflects plummeting perceptions of his power. At one time the world feared Trump although it never respected him. The silence that met his renewed demand for Greenland shows that the world no longer takes him seriously…. while Trump is able to run roughshod over Americans, he can no longer bully the rest of the world. Thanks to Trump, the U.S. has seen its global influence plunge.”

There is likely some truth to that. Trump’s inability to get past the war in Iran is evidence enough that his agenda-setting power is on the decline. However, the Trump administration has been able to exercise coercion against U.S. allies, so I’m not entirely sure it is about shifting perceptions of U.S. power.¹

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World thinks there are two other things going on — neither of which contradicts Krugman’s argument so much as emphasizes different dynamics. And both of them are encapsulated in this Politico story by Victor Jack, Chris Lunday, and Felicia Schwartz.

First, as they note, Trump has barked enough about Greenland for European allies to be familiar with the playbook: “Allies are also more skeptical of Trump's threats after repeated reversals on troop withdrawals and no follow-through on Greenland…. ‘No one was surprised’ by the latest Trump criticism of the alliance, a second NATO diplomat agreed. ‘We still need to take it seriously — but people tend to take it less seriously,’ they said. It’s becoming ‘the boy who cried wolf.’” This is less about declining perceptions of U.S. power and more about declining perceptions of Trump carrying through on threats. This is the “angry uncle” dynamic.

Second, paradoxically, Trump’s pressure on Europe to increase its defense spending has had an effect. Key European countries are spending a lot more on defense. Which means they feel less anxious when Trump tries to use a U.S. security withdrawal as bargaining leverage:

While insisting on the importance of a transatlantic bond at the leaders’ meeting, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that higher defense spending was in Europe’s own interest, one of the people cited above said.

“Trump’s speeches … have made us understand that it would be good to also be able to count on ourselves,” said Luxembourg’s Bettel. “We want to give ourselves the means, but if this is just about posturing and bootlicking — no, that’s not why I’m here.”

Ed Arnold, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former NATO official, said higher allied spending gives the U.S. less leverage.

Last year, Europe and Canada hiked their expenditure by 20 percent, and are set to increase it by another 11 percent in 2026, according to provisional NATO data published Tuesday. In total, that means the 31 allies now account for 43 percent of the alliance’s total defense spending.

While Europeans “don’t want the U.S. to pull out [of NATO] immediately,” said Arnold, “there is a bit of a shift” compared with last year, when allies were far more careful not to antagonize Trump as he criticized them over low defense spending.

Of course, the real test of these conjectures will be when Trump gets wind of stories about Europe yawning at his threats. One could argue that the spread of the TACO meme was one of the things that prompted Trump to use force in Venezuela and Iran. If the Crazy Uncle Trump meme catches fire, he might decide he needs to follow through on his threats.

Developing…

1. I’ve also just spent the past day or two speaking with a lot of Beltway foreign policy folks, many of whom believe that Trump’s weaponization of U.S. structural power has been effective.