BRITAIN/EU/MILITARY/NATO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “European allies knew to expect the unexpected from President Trump, especially after their rancorous encounter last month at the Group of 7 summit meeting in Canada. But Mr. Trump’s European tour has still rattled many on the Continent and in Britain, who have watched from a distance the chaos he creates on a daily basis in the United States but had not been directly exposed to it until this week. More important, for the long term, they have begun to believe that underneath the presidential narcissism, sarcasm and bluster there is a strategy: to undercut European solidarity in NATO and the European Union so the United States can exercise its economic and military power to shape relations with individual countries, just as China and Russia seek to do. The atmospherics have been awful. Mr. Trump happily broke protocol at NATO and in Britain, skipping appointments with other leaders, forcing changes in the agenda, scolding other leaders, calling an early news conference to get onto morning television programs in America, making unfounded claims about agreements and giving an interview to the British mass-market tabloid The Sun that deeply embarrassed his host, Prime Minister Theresa May.”
-Steven Erlanger, “Amid the Trumpian Chaos, Europe Sees a Strategy: Divide and Conquer,” The New York Times online, July 13, 2018