NATO should beware US love of walls

The White House did not specify what topics United States President Donald Trump and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will discuss at their working meeting scheduled for Thursday.

But the latter will almost certainly get an earful of US worries about its European allies embracing telecommunications equipment from China. Even if not from the US president himself. He has maintained a distance between himself and the all-out assault by some members of his administration on Chinese tech companies such as Huawei, in order to leave himself some wriggle room.

So although Chinese 5G, especially Huawei, will feature heavily as a priority US concern at the working level, the ministerial meetings in particular, the US president apparently intends to devote his efforts to once again pressing his country's NATO allies to pay more for their own protection, as leverage for greater obedience to its cause.