The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir

by John Bolton

Trump was bargaining in real time with the other leaders, trapped in a room without their prepared scripts. It was something to see. Some leaders said they couldn’t accept what Trump asked for on defense expenditures because it contradicted the earlier-adopted communiqué, which I communicated to Stoltenberg would be a real mistake. He agreed and helped head off that problem, but it was clear things were in dire straits. Canada’s Trudeau asked, “Well, John, is this one going to blow up too?” I answered, “Plenty of time left, what could go wrong?” and we both laughed. I gave Trump a note about reducing US Common Fund spending, which he passed to Stoltenberg, who blanched when he saw it. But at least that was now also on the table. With a few more comments from the crowd, the meeting ended, and we went off to prepare for Trump’s closing press conference, which was restful compared to Singapore. Trump gave a positive spin to the day’s events. The outcome was unmistakable: the United States expected its NATO allies to live up to the commitments they had made on defense spending. How unremarkable that should have been, but how much effort it had taken to get to something so banal. Indeed, this was definitely not the Obama presidency. Trump stopped off at the resumed leaders’ conference on Afghanistan to give some prepared remarks, noting as well the great spirit he thought was developing at NATO.