What was billed as a decisive NATO summit in The Hague has turned out to be little more than a diplomatic pageant, carefully orchestrated to please one man: Donald J. Trump. The result? A ritual of submission that confirmed Europe’s full descent into vassalage.

The core agreement—to raise defence-related spending to an eye-watering 5% of GDP—is not just a budgetary decision. It’s a political surrender, along with the end of the European welfare state that Trump has so long wished (and the consequent further rise of the far-right that Trump also longs for).

The formula, cleverly designed to obscure its enormity (3.5% on “hard defence” and 1.5% on infrastructure and cyber), was packaged to appease Trump, who himself never met such targets in his own budgets.

Spain’s quiet resistance—insisting on a more modest 2.1%—was a rare voice of dissent. Yet even that was met with open skepticism from NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte, who curtly dismissed the possibility of opt-outs, insisting that “NATO doesn’t know side deals.”

Meanwhile, Trump, ever the transactional operator, got what he wanted: a summit without awkward questions, such as on U.S. compromise to Article 5,........

© New Eastern Outlook