Groundhog day: Trump blasts Europe’s Nato members over defence spending

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Nato might have hoped that it had mollified Donald Trump last year when its members committed to spending 5% of their GDP on defence. But the alliance has shown mixed results in meeting Trump’s demands, and now the president has circled back to a US-owned Greenland. He is also, for good measure, threatening to pull all US armed forces out of Europe. Trump wants the continent to rely less on the US, but many Nato members appear to be trying to ride him out. Poland, Lithuania and other countries close to Russia have frontloaded their defence spending, clearly judging that the threat from Moscow is real. But the UK, France and Italy have backloaded their hikes, presumably because they see the real threat as Trump and think that by the time they say they will cough up, he will be long gone from power.