THE HAGUE, Netherlands — In the famous sketch from the 1970s series “Fawlty Towers,” hotelier John Cleese repeatedly reminds his staff ahead of a visit by some German guests: “Don’t mention the war!”
A similar thing played out during this past week’s meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, only this time it wasn’t a war decades in the past, but one raging right now in Europe, the biggest and most brutal on the continent since 1945.
“Don’t mention the war!”
Because making a big deal out of Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine would likely offend Donald Trump, once again the leader of the alliance’s most influential nation — a man who, for reasons still unclear, maintains an affinity for Russia’s murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, as well as an animosity toward Ukraine’s elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The reason for the latter, in contrast, is obvious. Trump tried to extort Zelenskyy during his first term and wound up getting impeached over it.
It would be comical, if it weren’t embarrassing and alarming.
Night after night, Russia launches drones and missiles at Ukraine’s cities and towns, killing ordinary Ukrainians in their homes. Other NATO leaders openly express their disdain for the former KGB operative who pines for the days of the old Soviet Union and its reach and power.
“I’ve not changed my views of Vladimir Putin. I don’t trust the guy,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said at his post-summit news conference.
“We know Putin. And until Putin changes his colors, probably, Russia is an acute threat to all the NATO countries,” Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said. “Estonia has known for a long time. Baltics, Nordics have known for a long time what Russia is. ... Right now they are occupying Ukraine, killing innocent people.”
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Trump, despite occasional public criticisms of Putin, still appears to have a soft spot for him, as he does for most autocrats. “I consider him a person that’s, I think, been misguided,” he said at his news conference at the close of the summit.
And so, to keep the peace, this year’s summit had a split personality. In Trump’s absence, Rutte and other leaders from the 32-member alliance felt free to criticize Putin and stress the importance of helping Ukraine fend off his invasion. But during the 23 hours Trump was on the ground in the Netherlands, the Russia-Ukraine talk would cool, particularly in his presence, and instead it was all praise for the American president, the great hero who had scored a tremendous victory by getting other members of NATO to increase their defense spending.
The joint statement released at the end barely mentioned Russia or Ukraine, in stark contrast to the communiques released following recent summits that strongly condemned Putin’s bloody war. It, too, emphasized the new spending goal of 5% of each member nation’s gross domestic product for defense, with at least 3.5% for actual military and 1.5% for ancillary spending such as electrical infrastructure and roads. Perhaps the one tangible benefit Ukraine took away was that military assistance provided to that country will count toward the donor NATO nation’s defense spending total.