NATO leaders have focused on “Trump-proofing” the alliance out of fear that former President Donald Trump could win office again and fracture the bloc, and it’s still unclear whether they could stop him.
Some NATO leaders are open to bumping up the defense spending requirement to 3 percent of a country’s GDP, while other members aren’t close to the 2 percent target. There still appears to be no consensus on how to nudge members to hit their spending targets, though outliers say they’ll meet the goals — within the decade.
And a couple members won’t stop taking shots at the United States and the West. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose country recently assumed the temporary European Union presidency, cozied up with China and Russia ahead of the summit, drawing criticism from across Europe. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, for his part, accused the U.S. and Western countries of making the Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza conflicts worse.
Blame it on the humidity
One thing all summit attendees could agree on: Washington’s weather was not welcoming.
Few NATO countries have such hot and humid summers as the District of Columbia, and European officials weren’t so thrilled as they buzzed around the city to high-level meetings in formal attire. The average temperature over the three days hovered in the mid-90s.
“It’s like a sauna” outside, Janne Kuusela, director general of Finland’s defense policy department, said on the summit’s air-conditioned sidelines.
We’re not saying the heat contributed to the heated conversations, but we’re not saying it didn’t…
