As of: February 12, 2024, 9:43 a.m
By: Stefan Krieger
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Trump is sending a clear message to NATO partners: If you don't pay, you have a problem.
A possible foretaste of his policies if he were to become president again.
Washington, D.C.
– Former US President Donald Trump's statement hit like a bombshell: According to his own statements, he would not grant protection from Russia to NATO partners who do not meet their financial obligations.
Trump made this clear at a campaign event for the 2024 US election.
Trump, currently the most promising candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, reported on Saturday (February 10) at a rally in the US state of South Carolina about an unspecified meeting with the president of a NATO state.
"One of the presidents of a major country stood up and said, 'Well, sir, if we don't pay and we get attacked by Russia, will you protect us?'"
US President Biden with sharp criticism of Trump
"I said, 'You haven't paid, you're delinquent?'" Trump reported.
In that case he will not protect the country.
Trump said he would even encourage Russia to do “whatever they want.”
The ex-president had repeatedly emphasized in the past how unfair it was that the USA had to stand up for the defense of the 30 other member states.
Above all, he criticized the fact that Europeans were not spending enough money on armaments.
Donald Trump at a rally in Conway, South Carolina.
© JULIA NIKHINSON/AFP
US President Joe Biden has sharply criticized the statements made by his likely opponent for the next presidency.
"Donald Trump's admission that he intends to give (Kremlin leader Vladimir) Putin the green light for more war and violence and to continue his brutal attack against a free Ukraine and to expand his aggression against the people of Poland and the Baltic states, is horrific and dangerous,” Biden said on Sunday (February 11, local time).
Trump's statements did not only provoke worried reactions in the USA.
“Any suggestion that allies will not defend themselves undermines our entire security, including that of the United States, and puts U.S. and European soldiers at increased risk,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in Brussels on Sunday.
CDU politician Röttgen warns: “We are primarily referring to us Germans”
CDU foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen warned in the
Bild newspaper
(Monday, February 12) that Germany must “prepare for the possibility that Donald Trump wins the US election in the fall.”
This would plunge NATO into an existential crisis because Trump sees the defense alliance in purely transactional terms, said the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
“Anyone who, from his point of view, does not pay enough will not be protected by the USA.” From Trump’s point of view, he declares states that do not pay “fair game.
This primarily refers to us Germans.”
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Germany must therefore “understand that we will soon have no choice but to defend ourselves at a time when there is war in Europe.
We have to do this as Europeans because anything else would be a capitulation to Putin,” said Röttgen.
In concrete terms, this means “that we have to massively increase arms production in Europe,” he demanded.
Trump's threats: "Hopefully everyone in Europe wakes up now"
The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael Roth (SPD), sees Trump's threats as a wake-up call to invest more in defense.
“Hopefully everyone in Europe will wake up now!
Whitewashing and burying your head in the sand is not a strategy,” Roth told the Berliner
Tagesspiegel.
“If Trump really moves back into the White House, anything can be expected.
Even with the worst,” he warned.
If Trump relativizes the alliance commitment resulting from Article Five of the NATO Treaty, he would “open the door to Russian imperialism.”
There is an “acute danger for all of us in NATO,” Roth continued, demanding that the Europeans must “now, above all, support Ukraine’s fight for freedom more decisively and far-reaching.”
EU Council President Charles Michel also criticized Trump's "reckless" statements as playing into Putin's hands.
They underlined “again the need for the EU to urgently develop its strategic autonomy and invest in its defense,” explained Michel on the online service Twitter, later “X”
(skr, afp, dpa)