Latest news with #NatoSummit
South China Morning Post
14 hours ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Summit snubs: what key Nato absences reveal about Indo-Pacific worries
For the first time in four years, the leaders of South Korea and Japan were nowhere to be seen at the annual Nato summit. Australia's prime minister was also absent from The Hague but New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon took part in the meeting. The four countries are not Nato members, but the security bloc has identified Japan , South Korea, Australia and New Zealand – also known as the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) – as key partners in the alliance's engagement with the Indo-Pacific region. Leaders of all four countries had attended annual Nato summits since 2022, at the invitation of the alliance, but this year, Japan, South Korea and Australia sent lower-level representatives to the event. The decision reflects higher priorities in a region concerned that Middle East conflicts could be distracting the United States from the Indo-Pacific, at least in the short term, experts say. Two leaders – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung – rejected Nato's invitation, citing as reasons 'domestic priorities and growing uncertainty in the Middle East'. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who initially accepted the invitation, cancelled his trip to The Hague a day before his departure, reportedly because there was little chance of a meeting with US President Donald Trump.
The Guardian
19 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Orchestrated grovel': critics react to Europe's attempts to tame Donald Trump
History may record this week as the one in which Donald Trump came to Europe to discuss defence spending. Diplomats may remember it as the week in which the art of obsequiousness reached new highs and the sycophants plunged new lows. All in the name of taming the president. It seems to have worked. After Trump landed to Washington from this week's Nato summit in The Hague, the White House posted a video that made clear how his team felt the trip had gone. The summit had concluded on Wednesday with a joint press conference in which Nato's secretary general, Mark Rutte, after showering the US president with compliments over his actions on Iran, bizarrely referred to him as 'daddy'. Rutte was now being widely derided for the summit's 'orchestrated grovel' and attempting to row back on his choice of language. In Washington, however, Team Trump were enjoying themselves. 'Daddy's home!' trilled the video, which mixed clips of Trump's handshakes with world leaders with footage of crowds awaiting his motorcade, soundtracked by a 2010 song by Usher: 'And I know you've been waiting for this loving all day …' The tone of Rutte's public bootlicking had been muted compared with the text messages he had sent to 'dear Donald' before the summit – 'Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, it was truly extraordinary … you will achieve something NO president in decades could get done' – and which the president had immediately leaked. 'I think he likes me,' smirked Trump later, while his cabinet giggled behind him. Ass-kissing, arse-licking, brown-nosing, sucking up – there is a reason metaphors for obsequiousness so often involve body fluids and the backside, because the act of sycophancy demeans both the arselicker and the arselickee. What is more cringeworthy, after all – the clips of Trump's cabinet members taking turns to parrot praise of his leadership and vision, or the fact that his fragile ego demands lavish compliments before he can get down to work? No doubt all the president's yes-men believe that lavishing him with praise can lead to lavish rewards. Take the former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who in 2020 presented him with a 'bookshelf-sized' bronze model of Mount Rushmore, portraying Trump's face next to those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. Noem is now the secretary of homeland security. Stephen Miller, who called Trump 'the most stylish president in our lifetime', is the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. To some observers, this is just how Trump works, at home and abroad, and world leaders like Rutte who engage in flattery and 'strategic self-emasculation' are just being smart. 'A useful way to think about President Trump and his team is not in terms of a conventional American administration, but rather as a court,' says Sam Edwards, a reader in modern political history at Loughborough University. Understood in those terms, he argues, performative upsucking is all. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion He points to Keir Starmer's first visit to Trump's Oval Office, when the UK prime minister theatrically brandished a letter from King Charles inviting Trump to a second state visit, saying, 'This is really special, this is unprecedented.' In this sense, Edwards argues, Rutte's conduct 'looks like debasement, like he's conducted himself with weakness,' says Edwards. 'But in the longer term, he gets the Nato partners to sign up to 5% expenditure on defence, which is something he wants as much as Trump wants. I guess that's the strategic calculation that Rutte has made. I might come in for criticism, but further down the line, do I get what I want? Yes.' That view is not universal, however. 'Mr Rutte, he's trying to embarrass you, sir,' Trump's former director of communications Anthony Scaramucci said earlier this week. 'He's literally sitting on Air Force One laughing at you.' David H Dunn, a professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, agrees that licking Trump's boots doesn't earn his favour but his disdain. His flattering cabinet were selected not because the president admires them, says Dunn, but because their obsequiousness shows their weakness. He thinks Rutte, too, has miscalculated. 'There is a lot of evidence from the first term that Trump doesn't necessarily respond to flattery,' Dunn says. 'It sends a signal that this is not an alliance of equals. This is not the America of old, whereby there was a coming together of countries of shared values and shared interests. What it looks like is fealty to the king.'
The Independent
a day ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Watch: Dutch queen appears to pull face while meeting Trump
Queen Maxima of the Netherlands appeared to subtly mimic Donald Trump 's mannerisms during a meeting at the Nato summit in The Hague. The moment, which took place on 27 June, quickly went viral after a video showed her making a brief expression as Trump smiled. Standing beside her husband, King Willem-Alexander, and the US president, Maxima's gesture sparked a flurry of online reactions—some praising her subtlety, others calling it inappropriate. The incident unfolded as Trump met with European leaders following amid the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘Orchestrated grovel': critics react to Europe's attempts to tame Donald Trump
History may record this week as the one in which Donald Trump came to Europe to discuss defence spending. Diplomats may remember it as the week in which the art of obsequiousness reached new highs and the sycophants plunged new lows. All in the name of taming the president. It seems to have worked. After Trump landed to Washington from this week's Nato summit in The Hague, the White House posted a video that made clear how his team felt the trip had gone. The summit had concluded on Wednesday with a joint press conference in which Nato's secretary general, Mark Rutte, after showering the US president with compliments over Iran, bizarrely referred to him as 'daddy'. Rutte was now being widely derided for the summit's 'orchestrated grovel' and attempting to row back on his choice of language. In Washington, however, Team Trump were enjoying themselves. 'Daddy's home!' trilled the video, which mixed clips of Trump's handshakes with world leaders with footage of crowds awaiting his motorcade, soundtracked by a 2010 song by Usher: 'And I know you've been waiting for this loving all day …' The tone of Rutte's public bootlicking had been muted compared with the text messages he had sent to 'dear Donald' ahead of the summit – 'Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, it was truly extraordinary … you will achieve something NO president in decades could get done' – and which the president had immediately leaked. 'I think he likes me,' smirked Trump later, while his cabinet giggled behind him. Ass-kissing, arse-licking, brown-nosing, sucking up – there is a reason metaphors for obsequiousness so often involve bodily fluids and the backside, because the act of sycophancy demeans both the arselicker and the arselickee. What is more cringeworthy, after all – the clips of Trump's cabinet members taking turns to parrot praise of his leadership and vision, or the fact that his fragile ego demands lavish compliments before he can get down to work? No doubt all the president's yes-men believe that lavishing him with praise can lead to lavish rewards. Take former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, who in 2020 presented him with a 'bookshelf-sized' bronze model of Mount Rushmore, portraying Trump's face next to those of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt. Noem is now the secretary of homeland security. Stephen Miller, who called Trump 'the most stylish president in our lifetime', is the White House deputy chief of staff for policy. To some observers, this is just how Trump works, at home and abroad, and world leaders like Rutte who engage in flattery and 'strategic self-emasculation' are just being smart. 'A useful way to think about President Trump and his team is not in terms of a conventional American administration, but rather as a court,' says Sam Edwards, reader in modern political history at Loughborough University. Understood in those terms, he argues, performative upsucking is all. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion He points to Keir Starmer's first visit to Trump's Oval Office, when the UK prime minister theatrically brandished a letter from King Charles inviting Trump to a second state visit, saying, 'This is really special, this is unprecedented.' In this sense, Edwards argues, Rutte's conduct 'looks like debasement, like he's conducted himself with weakness,' says Edwards. 'But in the longer term, he gets the Nato partners to sign up to 5% expenditure on defence, which is something he wants as much as Trump wants. I guess that's the strategic calculation that Rutte has made. I might come in for criticism, but further down the line, do I get what I want? Yes.' That view is not universal, however. 'Mr Rutte, he's trying to embarrass you, sir,' Trump's former director of communications Anthony Scaramucci said earlier this week. 'He's literally sitting on Air Force One laughing at you.' David H Dunn, professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, agrees that licking Trump's boots doesn't earn his favour but his disdain. His flattering cabinet were selected not because the president admires them, says Dunn, but because their obsequiousness shows their weakness. He thinks Rutte, too, has miscalculated. 'There is a lot of evidence from the first term that Trump doesn't necessarily respond to flattery,' Dunn says. 'It sends a signal that this is not an alliance of equals. This is not the America of old, whereby there was a coming together of countries of shared values and shared interests. What it looks like is fealty to the king.'
Irish Times
a day ago
- Business
- Irish Times
‘Daddy' Trump meets Nato, while defence, trade and Gaza dominate EU summit
Pat Leahy and Cormac McQuinn join Jack Horgan-Jones to look back on the week in politics: US President Donald Trump was the main attraction at a landmark Nato summit on Wednesday with Nato secretary general Mark Rutte calling him 'Daddy' during their press conference. Trump got what he came for with Nato member states agreeing to an increase of 5 per cent of GDP in defence spending . Over at the EU leaders summit on Thursday, defence spending was also high on the agenda with Ireland backing the EU's €150bn defence plan . The war in Gaza was highlighted too with Taoiseach Micheál Martin unable to comprehend how Europe doesn't seem capable of putting any pressure on Israel to stop it. And with Trump's tariffs pause set to end on July 9th, Ireland and other EU countries will be forgiven for looking at India and China as greater trading partners. Do policy interventions like reviewing RPZs compensate for the delayed release of the Government's housing plan ? The document won't be published until after the summer. Presidential candidates are still pretty thin on the ground with Fine Gael's Seán Kelly saying he 'could do a lot' as president but stopped short of declaring he actually will enter the race. Plus, the panel picks their favourite Irish Times pieces of the week: The endurance test that Irish concert-goers have to go through is worth it, Democratic mayoral primary Zohran Mamdani shocks as New York swelters, and Jaws and its Irish connection .
