Retired 4-star general and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) Wesley Clark on Sunday warned President Donald Trump’s posture toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) threatens security not just in Europe — but in the United States, too.
Trump is reportedly “considering a major change to the U.S.’ participation” in NATO, and has “discussed with aides the possibility of calibrating America’s NATO engagement in a way that favors members of the alliance that spend a set percentage of their gross domestic product on defense,” NBC News reported Thursday.
Asked whether NATO can survive without assistance from the U.S., Clark on Sunday said it can “survive … but not as an effective deterrent to Russian adventurism and escalation in Europe.”
“Can the United States maintain its own security without NATO?” Clark asked. “And the answer to that is: that’s also compromised.”
Clark noted “the way President Trump has roughed them up” has “been a real shock to Europe,” and stressed that while the president’s demand for increased spending from member nations is reasonable, the timeline he’s pushing for is not.
“[To] instantaneously say that tomorrow you're not going to operate with a certain country like Germany because it can't get its budget up to what you believe it should be, that's just another way of disguising a rupture with European allies.”
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