The tragedy of 'Westalgia'

BERLIN — European leaders breathed a sigh of relief as U.S. President Donald Trump departed last week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey.

Despite a few unseemly moments in which Trump reiterated his desire to seize Greenland and nonsensically ordered a halt to all trade with Spain, the meeting went off without any major catastrophes. Most importantly, Trump did not announce any major troop withdrawals from Europe or any moves to leave the alliance. He even had warm words for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and pledged to grant Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air-defense missiles domestically.

By the end, even Trump proclaimed that there was “love” in the air. But optics aside, the summit was an absurd exercise. NATO leaders reveled in their pledges to increase defense-related spending to 5 percent, even though everyone knows that this arbitrary number means nothing in the absence of deeper discussions about capabilities.

The figure was pulled out of thin air last year to appease Trump. In the months leading up to the summit, the same leaders had worried that Trump