NATO chief praises record defense spending while warning Trump’s rhetoric undermines security

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that its European members and Canada had increased defense spending to record levels, warning that former U.S. President Donald Trump was questioning the United States’ commitment to its allies. , thereby undermining their security. Stoltenberg said U.S. NATO partners have reversed post-Cold War spending cuts since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula prompted a $600 billion increase in military budgets.

Stoltenberg told reporters on the eve of the organization’s defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels that last year we saw an unprecedented 11% increase in growth among European allies and Canada. In 2014, NATO leaders pledged to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense within ten years. While progress has been slow, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago raised concerns. The 2% figure is now considered the minimum requirement.

This year, I expect 18 allies to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. Stoltenberg said this was another record number and a six-fold increase from 2014, when only three allies achieved the target. Trump, the front-runner for this year’s U.S. Republican presidential nomination, said on Saturday that he had warned that he would allow Russia to do whatever it wanted against NATO members that failed to spend 2% of their GDP on defense.

President Joe Biden dismissed Trump’s comments as dangerous and un-American, seizing on the former president’s remarks as fueling doubts among U.S. partners about his future reliability on the global stage. . Stoltenberg said the comments called into question the credibility of NATO’s collective security commitments, a stipulation of Article 5 of the organization’s founding treaty, which stipulates that an attack on any member state will be punished by all members. response.

Stoltenberg said the whole philosophy of NATO is that an attack on one ally will trigger a reaction across the alliance, and as long as we collectively support that message, we can prevent any military attack on any ally. “Any suggestion that we are not supporting each other and protecting each other undermines the safety of all of us,” he said.

Trump’s comments not only triggered a wave of unease across Europe but are also likely to become a major talking point at the annual Munich Security Conference in the Bavarian city later this week. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken will both attend the event, which U.S. officials hope will focus more on pressing security concerns in Ukraine and Gaza, the challenges posed by China and the collective role of multilateralism importance in defense.

James O’Brien, the top U.S. diplomat in Europe, said on Tuesday that Blinken would be ready to answer questions about the U.S. commitment to NATO allies and related to Trump’s comments. But he also sought to downplay European concerns, pointing out that NATO has been the cornerstone of European security for more than seven decades. O’Brien told reporters that the Democratic and Republican administrations in the United States “have regarded NATO as the cornerstone of our security, certainly in Europe, but increasingly as a global partner.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz responded to Trump’s comments attacked the former president without mentioning his name. He posted on the social media platform

Scholz’s spokesman, Steffen Herbestreit, told reporters in Berlin on Wednesday that while such comments were dangerous, it was also important to stress that they had “no influence in forcing NATO to act.”

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from associated news agency – PTI)