The Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, had to come out this Sunday in defense of the Atlantic Alliance after the incendiary statements of the former president of the United States, Donald Trump, delivered at a campaign rally in South Carolina. The Republican candidate, the main favorite in all the polls to face Joe Biden again on November 5, reproduced a conversation he supposedly had with a NATO leader in which he threatened his interlocutor with “encouraging” Russia to do “whatever he wanted” with those allies that were “delinquent”, referring to the member countries that “do not pay their bills”, that is, that do not fulfill the commitment to allocate 2% of their GDP in military spending.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and Russia attacks us, will you protect us?'” And I said to him: “Have you not paid, are you delinquent?” He declared from the city of Conway. «No, I would not protect them. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever they want. You have to pay. “They have to pay their bills,” concluded the tycoon. Comments that White House spokesman Andrew Bates described as “appalling and deranged” for “encouraging the invasion of our closest allies by murderous regimes.” In this sense, Bates, who warned of the “danger to American national security, global stability and our internal economy” posed by Trump’s outbursts, boasted that Biden has managed during his first three years in the White House to “reestablish » their alliances.
Stoltenberg’s response was not long in coming either. The Secretary General accused Trump of “undermining” European security. “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the United States, and puts American and European soldiers at greater risk,” he stressed in a statement in which he also stressed that NATO “continues to be prepared and capable of defending all allies.” He warned the Norwegian that “any attack” against any of its members “will be responded to with a united and forceful response”, following the principle of collective defense included in Article 5 of the Atlantic Treaty. Stoltenberg also expressed his desire for the United States to “remain a strong and committed ally” of NATO “regardless of who wins the presidential election.”
His reaction was not the only one. The president of the European Council, Charles Michel, also accused Trump of “serving the interests” of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and of not bringing “neither more security nor more peace to the world” with these statements. For his part, the Polish Defense Minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, maintained that no electoral campaign justifies playing with NATO security. “NATO’s motto “one for all, all for one” is a concrete commitment,” he wrote on the social network X. “Undermining the credibility of allied countries means weakening the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “No electoral campaign is an excuse to play with the security of the Alliance.”
Meanwhile, the Polish president of the ultra-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), Andrzej Duda, wrote that, “thanks to the wise and far-sighted policy of the last eight years” of the conservative PiS government, Poland spends 4% of GDP in defence. “The alliance between Poland and the United States must be strong, regardless of who is currently in power in Poland and the United States,” said Duda, who has gone so far as to affirm that Trump always keeps his word. «I have always acted in this way and will continue to act in this spirit, respecting all our partners in the United States. Offending half of the American political scene serves neither our economic interests nor the security of Poland,” Duda added after his latest institutional clash with Donald Tusk, the liberal prime minister who is trying to reverse the authoritarian drift led by the PiS.
2024-02-11 22:33:18
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