BRUSSELS — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says the message in U.S. President Donald Trump’s “blunt” speech urging alliance members to boost defense spending echoed that of previous administrations.
Stoltenberg spoke to RFE/RL in an interview on May 26, a day after Trump met with the other leaders of the 28-member military alliance at its new headquarters in Brussels.
Trump used a large part of his speech before unveiling a 9/11 memorial to admonish allies he said are not shouldering their share of the financial burden, saying it is “not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States” that only five NATO countries currently meet a target of spending at least 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.
Trump “has a blunt and direct style,” Stoltenberg told RFE/RL. “This plain speaking is something we have seen before and he expressed clearly an expectation that European allies and Canada should invest more in defense.”
However, he added that “the language may be different and the words may be different but the core message is the same as we have heard before, also during the previous administration: that we need fairer burden-sharing in the alliance.”
NATO countries pledged in 2014 to try to reach the 2 percent target within a decade, but so far only Britain, Estonia, Greece, Poland, and the United States are doing so.