WASHINGTON — Mission unaccomplished.

NATO leaders converged on the American capital to celebrate the alliance’s 70th anniversary this week determined not to let the gathering devolve into recriminations over burden-sharing and other disagreements.

U.S. President Donald Trump had other plans. And as usual when it comes to NATO, they involved Germany.

"I'll be talking about Germany, I always talk about Germany," Trump said during a White House meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in the run-up to the celebration. “Germany, to be honest, is not paying their fair share.”

Trump said that while he has “great feeling” for Germany (claiming, falsely, that his father was born there), the country needs to step up.

"More allies are now meeting their commitments, but too many others are falling short and as we all acknowledge, Germany is chief among them" — Mike Pence, U.S. vice president

So began a three-day shaming campaign by the Trump administration aimed at pressuring Berlin to spend more on defense.

Trump has been prodding Germany to meet NATO’s defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP by 2024. Though Berlin has increased spending, it will miss that goal and, according to its latest draft budget, looks likely to fall short of a more modest 1.5 percent target that Angela Merkel committed to last year. The U.S. accounts for more than two-thirds of NATO’s defense spending.

NATO sought to defuse the transatlantic tensions by inviting only foreign ministers to the celebration, reasoning that diplomats were less likely to quarrel (and in private, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn't single out Germany, according one NATO foreign minister). Putting the likes of Trump and Merkel in the same room to discuss the alliance’s future was deemed too risky. The decision did little to contain the Trump administration’s ire, however.

"More allies are now meeting their commitments, but too many others are falling short and as we all acknowledge, Germany is chief among them,” Vice President Mike Pence told a gathering of NATO security officials organized by several think tanks on Wednesday. “Germany must do more.”

Pence went on to upbraid Germany for pursuing a gas pipeline project in the Baltic Sea with Russia known as Nord Stream 2. The pipeline is opposed by most EU countries on the grounds that it would reward Moscow’s aggressive behavior and damage Ukraine. Russian gas deliveries to Europe now pass through Ukraine, which would likely lose billions in transit fees if the pipeline goes into operation. Washington, which wants Europe to buy more of its liquified natural gas (LNG), also argues that Nord Stream would make the region more reliant on Russia for its energy supply.

“We cannot ensure the defense of the West if our allies grow dependent on Russia,” Pence said. “If Germany insists on building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as President Trump has said, it could literally turn Germany into a captive of Russia. It is simply unacceptable for Europe's largest economy to ignore the threat of Russian aggression.”

Germany rejects that argument, countering that the project would merely change the delivery path Russian gas takes to Germany, not the overall volume.

Pence’s remarks received a muted response, in part because the audience included many Germans and other Europeans.

At one particularly awkward moment, Pence praised “the resolute American leadership of President Donald Trump.” He then paused to allow for applause but none came.

Germany wasn’t at the table when NATO was founded in 1949. As the country took fire from its allies in Washington this week, the Germans in attendance looked as though they wished they weren’t at the anniversary either.

“We made a firm commitment to invest more money on defense and we intend to keep our word" — Heiko Maas, Germany's foreign minister

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas looked particularly shell-shocked.

Speaking at the NATO conference after Pence, Maas stammered his way through his remarks in halting English, staring at his text for most of the 15-minute speech.

His remarks were full of platitudes about the importance of NATO for European security, but unlike Stoltenberg, who lavished praise on the U.S. in an address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Maas barely mentioned the country that has guaranteed his German security for more than 70 years.

He insisted Germany would honor its NATO commitments.

“We made a firm commitment to invest more money on defense and we intend to keep our word,” he said, noting that Germany had increased defense spending since 2014 by 40 percent.

Yet he also struck a defiant note.

“Burden-sharing is more than defense expenditure. Anyone asking about burden-sharing must look at the entire spectrum of resources, capabilities, contribution to NATO operations and alliance defense,” he said. “NATO may be a security alliance but above all it's an alliance of values.”

Unlike most of the other speakers at the conference, Maas refused to take any questions.

Germany wasn’t without its defenders.

Stoltenberg, who was peppered with questions about German defense spending, repeatedly tried to deflect the criticism.

“The good news is that after years of cutting spending, Germany and other allies are adding billions to their defense spending,” he said. "Germany is a lead nation in Afghanistan, has been there for many years; Germany leads one of our battle groups in the eastern part of the alliance in Lithuania; and Germany is also now responsible for a high readiness force in NATO."

Even so, there was no papering over the discord. After Maas spoke, for example, the tensions broke out into the open onstage.

Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz, whose country fiercely opposes the Nord Stream pipeline, noted that Germany is largely isolated in its commitment to the pipeline project, going as far as to question Berlin’s loyalty.

“Either you think about relations with Russia as a first choice or you think of your closer allies,” he said. "The project provides financial resources for Russia. Russia uses this to modernize its army and threaten the security of the Western world.”

Sitting next to Czaputowicz, Constanze Stelzenmüller, a prominent German security analyst with the Brookings Institution who opposes Nord Stream but took issue with the nature of the criticism, responded: “There are Eastern European countries which buy 100 percent of their energy from Russia and are not notably in any way captive of Russia. These things do not correlate and they also do not correlate in the German case, which is why I will say to you it is insulting to call us captive of Russia because we’re holding together the Russian sanctions consensus in Europe at a very real cost to German business.”

While German officials have become accustomed to Trump administration attacks, they said they were surprised by the two-pronged strike on spending and Nord Stream during the NATO celebration.

One senior German diplomat speculated that the Trump administration attacks were aimed at the president’s domestic audience, to show his voters that he was taking a hard line on burden sharing. In fact, the NATO anniversary received little attention in the U.S. press.

Whatever the Trump administration’s reasons for the public pressure campaign on Germany, the gathering made it clear that the transatlantic tensions are more about the German-American relationship than NATO as a whole.

“We’re very hopeful they’ll get it right,” Pompeo said in a press conference at the end of the NATO meeting. “We will urge them to continue to do so.”