Opening of the summit of 70 years of NATO, leaded by disputes

Moody atmosphere at the summit of Watford, near London, to celebrate the 70th anniversary of NATO. The Alliance, whose leaders meet on December 2 and 3, is undermined by the differences.

The most virulent is the French President Emmanuel Macron and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It focuses on Ankara's intervention in northeastern Syria without informing other Alliance members.

Insult exchanges

The two leaders have come to exchange insults and their partners hope they will break the abscess on Tuesday before the summit, during a meeting on Syria in London with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson .

The other unknown will be the behavior of Donald Trump. The US President has only one topic of discussion since his election when he comes to NATO: sharing the burden for military spending and its corollary, increasing the defense budgets of European and Canadian allies .

NATO officials hope that the agreement to reduce the US contribution to the Alliance's operating budget and the financial efforts provided by the allies to increase their military spending will appease it.

NATO Secretary General, Norway's Jens Stoltenberg, says that next year, non-US allies will have increased defense spending by $ 130 billion since 2016.

NATO "cerebral death"

But many fear that this is not enough and fear a new bloodshed Donald Trump. Last year in Brussels, he took on Angela Markel, accused of not paying enough and contributing to Russia's military effort with massive purchases of gas.

The Europeans are left hoping that the evening at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday night will entertain the US President to allow a peaceful summit the next day, said the head of diplomacy of a country far behind for its military spending.

Allies committed in 2014 to devote 2% of their GDP to military spending in 2024. Nine countries achieved this goal in 2019 and if France will reach it in 2025, Germany is still very far from the goal.

A brief summit

Donald Trump will have the opportunity to discuss it with Jens Stoltenberg during a breakfast in London on Tuesday before meeting French President Emmanuel Macron, whose critics against the Alliance, considered in a state of brain death, have shocked all his partners. The chancellor said her disapproval and no capital of the Alliance supported the French president. Emmanuel Macron denounces the lack of consultation on strategic decisions made by the United States and Turkey.

These tensions may spoil the party, because they will ruin the unity of the Alliance, which is the game of Russia, lamented the European Minister.

The summit will be brief: a three-hour work session Wednesday at a prestigious golf hotel in Watford, a suburb of London. But the decisions will be significant, because in London, the space will become a field of defense operations for NATO and the Alliance will position itself in the face of the rise of China, the second largest military budget in the world and present in cyberspace.

With AFP