Donald Trump has never been one to mince words.
On the campaign trail, Trump called NATO “obsolete” and once elected continued chastising NATO member nations for not meeting their financial obligations to the organization.
Watch below:
These grave security concerns are the same reason that I have been very, very direct with Secretary Stoltenberg and members of the alliance in saying that NATO members must finally contribute their fair share and meet their financial obligations.
But 23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defense. This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States and many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years, and not paying in those past years.
Over the last eight years, the United States spent more on defense than all other NATO countries combined. If all NATO members had spent just 2 percent of their GDP on defense last year, we would have had another $119 billion for our collective defense and for the financing of additional NATO reserves.
We should recognize that with these chronic underpayments and growing threats, even 2 percent of GDP is insufficient to close the gaps in modernizing, readiness and the size of forces. We have to make up for the many years lost. Two percent is the bare minimum for confronting today’s very real and very vicious threats.
If NATO countries made their full and complete contributions, then NATO would be even stronger than it is today, especially from the threat of terrorism.
It definitely wasn’t the speech these leaders were expecting.
In jest at the end, Trump noted:
And I never asked once what the new NATO headquarters cost. I refuse to do that. But it is beautiful.