President Donald Trump said he is considering pulling the United States out of NATO. Speaking to The Telegraph, Trump called the alliance a “one-way street,” as the U.S. assists nations, but European allies fail to do the same.
Asked about potentially reconsidering NATO, Trump said, “Oh yes, I would say beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”
Further discussing NATO’s reluctance to assist the U.S., Trump stated, “Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.”
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem,” he said. “It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us.”
Similar NATO concerns have been voiced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “[T]o see that in a time of need – the United States has identified a grave risk to our national security and our national interest, and we needed to conduct this operation, and we have countries like Spain, a NATO member that we are pledged to defend, denying us the use of their airspace and bragging about it, denying us the use of our – of their bases,” he said. “And there are other countries that have done that as well.”
Rubio explained that he has supported NATO because he believes “these basing rights give us leverage and give us flexibility in operational capability all over the world,” although he noted this relationship now faces renewed scrutiny because “if NATO is just about us defending Europe if they’re attacked but then denying us basing rights when we need them, that’s not a very good arrangement.”
