Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicted that the United States would withdraw from NATO if former President Donald Trump retakes the White House later this year.
“He means what he says. In 2016, people literally didn’t take him seriously,” the 76-year-old Clinton said during a panel discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. He warned, referring to the 45th president’s unexpected defeat in the election.
“Given the opportunity, he will do everything in his power to become an absolute authoritarian leader,” she continued. “And he will take us out of NATO.”
Trump, 77, boasted at a rally in Conway, South Carolina earlier this month that he told an unnamed president of a “great power” that he would not protect desperate NATO members who do not meet their defense spending obligations. It caused a firestorm.
“No, I won’t protect you,” Trump recalled telling the leader. “In fact, I’m going to encourage them [Russia] to do whatever they want. Must be paid. you have to pay the bill. ”
Throughout his presidency, Trump publicly criticized NATO members for failing to meet their 2006 pledge to spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense.
In response to Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, many of the 31 member states have increased their defense spending.
“Donald Trump’s political rallies don’t actually reflect Donald Trump’s actual policies,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the・Press” “If you look at his policies and his track record, he actually increased funding for NATO, expanded the European Reassurance Initiative, and in fact, for Ukraine, he was the first president to give deadly weapons to Ukraine. So I think his record is strong and I think that’s important.”
President Trump’s allies are privately mulling the possibility of splitting NATO into two tiers. One layer is those who can obtain security based on Article 5 by fulfilling their spending commitments, and the other layer is those who do not raise funds. reported by bloomberg last week.
Article 5 of the NATO Treaty stipulates that if one member state is attacked, all other members of the alliance must come to its aid. The system has only been invoked once against the United States, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Last year, Congress included a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that would limit the president’s ability to unilaterally withdraw from NATO without a green light from Congress.
Clinton didn’t think such policies would be enough to deter Trump, suggesting that Trump would “just defund our mandates.”
President Biden, 81, reprimanded President Trump last week over his comments at a rally.
“The former president sent a frankly dangerous, shocking, and un-American signal to the world. Just days ago, President Trump invited: [Russian President Vladimir] “President Putin is going to invade some of our NATO allies,” Biden said at the time.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg added that President Trump’s comments “undermine” the defense bloc, but then added that the United States “remains a committed ally of NATO” regardless of the election outcome. expressed confidence.
“The whole idea of NATO is that an attack on one ally triggers an alliance-wide response, and as long as we support that message together, we can stop a military attack on any ally,” Stolte said. Nberg said.
So far, 18 of the 31 members have reached or are expected to reach the 2% threshold, Stoltenberg said.
