Former NATO Secretary General (2014-2024) Jens Stoltenberg said that the Alliance could have collapsed in 2018 due to US President Donald Trump's dissatisfaction with member states' defense spending.
„This could be the meeting at which NATO will collapse.“ „The Alliance has managed to function successfully for 70 years, but not after July 12, 2018“, the British newspaper The Guardian quoted an excerpt from Stoltenberg's book.
He noted that Trump has regularly criticized NATO leaders for their reluctance to increase military spending. At the alliance summit on July 12, 2018, he demanded a 4% GDP target and was planning to walk out. "The United States doesn't need NATO. Why should I keep paying for this organization when I don't need it?" Stoltenberg quoted Trump as saying.
After being elected to his first term, the American leader said that NATO "has problems" and is "an outdated organization." At the time, he argued that countries were not meeting their spending commitments, forcing the United States to take on more responsibility.
At the NATO summit in The Hague in June this year, a decision was made to increase the military spending of European countries to 5% of GDP by 2035. Of this, 3.5% will be allocated directly to defense needs, and the remaining 1.5% will go to creating infrastructure that can be used in wartime.