TRUMP FALLS BACK TO IRONCLAD NATO COMMITMENT WITH RUSSIA TENSIONS RISING

Donald Trump is set to closely hug the Nato alliance he has previously derided as tensions with Russia escalate following last week’s missile attack on Syria.

Trump will host Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg at the White House on Wednesday and express what a White House official called an “ironclad” commitment to the transatlantic military alliance.

Capped by a joint press conference, the White House hopes Stoltenberg’s visit will turn a page after Trump’s erratic dismissals of Nato as “obsolete”, a theme he developed first as a Republican candidate. Aides signaled that the White House has a broader message, aimed at Russia, where secretary of state Rex Tillerson is attempting to cleave an infuriated Vladimir Putin from Syrian proxy Bashar al-Assad.

Trump “has been very firm that he is 100% committed to Nato”, a White House official said, a position “probably reinforced by everything that Russia is doing”.

White House officials did not indicate that Stoltenberg and Trump will announce any new initiatives, which are more likely to come when Trump meets his fellow Nato heads of government in Brussels next month.

But on the agenda with Stoltenberg is a broad “Russia discussion” centered around opposition to key Kremlin priorities.

“We expect the president and the secretary general to talk about Nato’s approach to Russia, and to emphasize that Russia must uphold all of its commitments under the Minsk agreement to peacefully resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” a White House official said. 

White House officials also said they considered “credible” and “concern[ing]” reports of Russian involvement in last October’s coup plot in Montenegro, whose Nato accession Trump certified on Tuesday. Moscow has denied any involvement and opposes the Balkan country’s likely inclusion as the alliance’s 29th member nation.

Trump has in the past dismissed Nato as obsolete in an age of terrorism, even as alliance forces have been deployed in Afghanistan for over 15 years. He has suggested that Nato nations are short-changing the US by contributing insufficient defense spending, incorrectly suggesting that Nato members somehow owe the US money for their protection.
   
White House officials on Wednesday said Trump and Stoltenberg would instead discuss encouraging Nato members to channel more of their national economies into their defense budgets, a perennial and bipartisan concern for all US administrations in the 21st century.

Trump and Stoltenberg will meet amid rapidly deteriorating relations between the US and Russia. An abrupt White House reversal on Assad has prompted outrage from the Kremlin, whose connections to Trump’s associates are under investigation by the FBI.

On Wednesday night, the Washington Post revealed that former foreign policy aide Carter Page, who had been identified as a contact of a Russian spy indicted in 2015, has had his communications monitored by the FBI as an agent of a foreign power.