Trump arrives at a NATO summit facing an alliance shaped to his liking

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday is meeting with members of a NATO alliance that he has worked to bend to his will over the years and whose members are rattled by his latest comments casting doubt on the U.S. commitment to its mutual defense guarantees.

Trump’s comments en route to the Netherlands that his fidelity to Article 5 “depends on your definition” are drawing attention at the NATO summit, as will the new and fragile Iran-Israel ceasefire that Trump helped broker after the U.S. unloaded airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

At the same time, the alliance is poised to enact one of Trump’s chief priorities for NATO: a pledge by its member countries to increase, sometimes significantly, how much they spend on their defense.

“I’ve been asking them to go up to 5% for a number of years,” Trump said Wednesday morning as he met with Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary-general. “I think that’s going to be very big news.”

The boost in spending follows years of Trump complaints that other countries weren’t paying their fair share for membership in an alliance created as a bulwark against threats from the former Soviet Union. Most NATO countries, with the key exception of Spain, are preparing to endorse the 5% pledge, motivated to bolster their own defenses not just by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine but also, perhaps, to placate Trump.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump suggested that he as president would not necessarily heed the alliance’s mutual defense guarantees outlined in Article 5 of the NATO treaty. In March of this year, he expressed uncertainty that NATO would come to the United States’ defense if needed, though the alliance did just that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

On Tuesday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to The Hague for the summit that whether he is committed to Article 5 “depends on your definition.”

“There’s numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right?” Trump said. “But I’m committed to being their friends.” He signaled that he would give a more precise definition of what Article 5 means to him once he is at the summit.

New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee who traveled to The Hague and met with several foreign leaders at the summit, said other countries raised “understandable questions” about the U.S.’s commitment to the alliance, “certainly given President Trump’s past statements.”

“We were very strong and reassuring everyone that we are committed to NATO, we are committed to Article 5, we are committed to maintaining troops on the eastern flank,” said Shaheen, who represented the U.S. Senate with Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware.

Trump also vented to reporters before leaving Washington about the actions by Israel and Iran after his announced ceasefire — although on Monday, he said the ceasefire was “very good.”

After Trump arrived in the Netherlands, news outlets, including The Associated Press, published stories revealing that a U.S. intelligence report suggested in an early assessment that Iran’s nuclear program had been set back only a few months by weekend strikes and was not “completely and fully obliterated,” as Trump had said.

But on Wednesday morning, Trump and other senior Cabinet officials vigorously pushed back on the assessment and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the administration was launching an investigation into who disclosed those findings to reporters.

“That hit ended the war,” Trump said. Drawing comparisons to the atomic bombings from the U.S. during World War II, he added: ”I don’t want to use an example of Hiroshima. I don’t want to use an example of Nagasaki. But that was essentially the same thing. That ended that war.”

The White House has not said what other world leaders Trump would meet with one-on-one while in The Hague, but Trump said in his morning meeting with Rutte that he will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy later Wednesday.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report from Washington.

荷兰海牙（美联社）——美国总统唐纳德·特朗普周三会见了北约成员国。多年来，他一直努力让北约成员国屈服于他的意志，而他最近的言论令这些成员国感到不安，这些言论质疑美国对其共同防御承诺的承诺。

特朗普在前往荷兰途中发表的言论——他对《北约》第五条的忠诚“取决于你的定义”——引起了北约峰会的关注，同样引人注目的还有特朗普在美国空袭伊朗核设施后促成的脆弱的伊朗-以色列停火协议。

与此同时，北约正准备落实特朗普为北约制定的一项主要优先事项：成员国承诺增加国防开支，有时甚至大幅增加。

“我多年来一直要求他们将税率提高到5%。”特朗普周三上午在会见北约秘书长马克·吕特时表示，“我认为这将是一个非常重大的消息。”

此次军费开支的增加，源于特朗普多年来对其他国家在北约成员国身份问题上缴纳的不公平份额。北约的建立旨在抵御前苏联的威胁。除西班牙这一关键例外，大多数北约国家正准备签署5%的军费承诺，其动机不仅是为了加强自身防御，也是为了安抚特朗普。

2016年竞选总统时，特朗普曾暗示，如果他当选总统，未必会遵守北约条约第五条规定的联盟共同防御保障。今年3月，他表示不确定北约是否会在必要时保卫美国，尽管在2001年9月11日恐怖袭击事件后，北约确实这样做了。

周二，他在前往海牙参加峰会的空军一号上告诉记者，他是否致力于遵守第五条“取决于你如何定义第五条”。

“关于第五条有很多种解释，你们知道吧？”特朗普说，“但我致力于与他们做朋友。”他暗示，一旦参加峰会，他将对第五条对他而言意味着什么给出更精确的定义。

新罕布什尔州参议员珍妮·沙欣是参议院外交关系委员会的首席民主党议员，她前往海牙参加了峰会，并会见了多位外国领导人。她说，其他国家对美国对联盟的承诺提出了“可以理解的疑问”，“尤其考虑到特朗普总统过去的言论”。

“我们态度非常强硬，并向所有人保证，我们致力于北约，我们致力于遵守第五条，我们致力于在东翼维持驻军，”沙欣说道。他与特拉华州民主党参议员克里斯·库恩斯一同代表美国参议院出席了会议。

特朗普在离开华盛顿前，还向记者抱怨以色列和伊朗在他宣布停火后采取的行动——尽管周一他表示停火“非常好”。

特朗普抵达荷兰后，包括美联社在内的多家新闻媒体发表报道，披露一份美国情报报告在早期评估中指出，周末的袭击只使伊朗的核计划倒退了几个月，并没有像特朗普所说的那样“彻底摧毁”。

但周三上午，特朗普和其他内阁高级官员强烈反驳了这一评估，国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯表示，政府正在对是谁向记者泄露了这些调查结果展开调查。

“那次袭击结束了战争，”特朗普说。他将此次袭击与美国在二战期间投下的原子弹相提并论，并补充道：“我不想用广岛的例子，也不想用长崎的例子。但本质上是一样的。那次袭击结束了那场战争。”

白宫尚未透露特朗普在海牙期间还会与哪些其他世界领导人进行一对一会晤，但特朗普在上午与英国首相吕特的会晤中表示，他将于周三晚些时候会见乌克兰总统泽连斯基。

美联社记者达琳·苏珀维尔从华盛顿对此报道亦有贡献。