Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 11.4% (68 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0.8% (5 hits)
• Availability Heuristic - 8.2% (49 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 6.7% (40 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 5.8% (35 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 12.4% (74 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 4.2% (25 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 5.8% (35 hits)

Article text

NATO chief faces challenge at summit as Trump demands ‘loyalty’ and not just burden-sharing

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Since he started work as NATO secretary-general almost two years ago, Mark Rutte has spent much of his time trying to keep the United States anchored to the world’s biggest military alliance, employing outright flattery to dissuade U.S.

President Donald Trump from acting on threats to abandon it.

But the goalposts keep shifting, raising the stakes ahead of this week’s summit in Turkey.

Initially, it was about money.

Trump has long railed against NATO allies for spending too small a fraction of their national budgets on defense.

But those problems were addressed at their summit last year, when U.S. allies committed to invest as much as America, in gross domestic product terms.

NATO’s real problem now is turning that money into military capabilities, particularly as European countries worry about a possible attack from Russia.

Still, Rutte tried to put to bed any lingering concerns at a White House meeting last month, with props redolent of an American flag — showing $1.2 trillion in spending by European allies and Canada since 2017.

He pushed back, gently, on Trump’s complaints that NATO did not support the U.S. against Iran, noting that up to 5,000 U.S. planes took off from bases in Europe before an April ceasefire.

But Trump appeared unmoved, saying he was still disappointed at some NATO allies’ refusal to join the Iran war, which he had launched alongside Israel without consulting them.

“We don’t need their money — we don’t need anything,” Trump said.

“I just want loyalty.”

Trump suggested he might have skipped the upcoming summit entirely were it not being hosted by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It’s a sign that even Erdogan and Rutte — foreign leaders Trump seems to hold in rare esteem — will have their work cut out for them in keeping the summit on track.

Ruttes approach has been heavy on flattery.

Last month’s carefully choreographed pitch in the Oval Office — with props redolent of an American flag — laid down a new marker, even for a man heavily criticized for likening Trump to a “daddy.”

But Trump wants more now, and his demand for “loyalty” is hard to capture on any chart.

Rutte’s predecessor, Stoltenberg, has written in his memoir about chairing a 2018 summit that Trump nearly upended.

“If an American president says he no longer wishes to defend the other allies and leaves a NATO summit in protest, then the NATO treaty and its security guarantee aren’t worth very much,” Stoltenberg wrote.

Each summit is meant to showcase the commitment to collective security — the all-for-one, one-for-all pledge enshrined in Article 5 of NATO’s treaty.

It’s only been invoked once, when allies came to America’s aid after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The last NATO summit was held in The Hague, the hometown of Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister.

The Dutch royal family hosted dinner, and Trump stayed overnight at the king’s palace.

Rutte got the allies behind a major defense spending pledge, and Trump left a happy man, calling his NATO partners a “nice group of people.”

This year, the summit will be hosted by Erdogan, another key NATO member with an independent streak.

His close ties to Trump may keep the American president at the table, but it’s unlikely to mend the rifts.

Rutte has tried to convince Trump that his European partners are spending so much more that America can safely turn its attention to security challenges posed by China while they handle the war in Ukraine.