Trump says US committed to Nato’s mutual defence pledge

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said that the United States remained committed to Nato’s mutual defence pledge, after he failed to endorse it in a speech in Brussels last month.

Amid worries by Washington’s European partners that the US leader had not fully bought into the Atlantic alliance, Trump told reporters: “I’m committing the United States to Article Five. Certainly we are there to protect.”

“That’s one of the reasons that I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force, by paying the kinds of money necessary to have that force,” Trump told a joint press conference with visiting Romanian President Klaus Iohannis.

The US president stunned Europe’s leaders at a summit in Brussels on May 25 when he failed to publicly back the now 29member bloc’s founding mutual defence guarantee. Instead he castigated the allies for failing to pay their way with contributions to Nato forces, singling out especially Germany.

According to Politico, Trump’s defence and security advisors included in his prepared speech a clear endorsement of the mutual defence pledge, but Trump himself struck it out just before speaking.

Doubts have remained since then, despite US diplomats and military leaders themselves restating the pledge. Just days before his Jan 20 inauguration, Trump rocked the post-World War II western alliance by calling Nato ‘obsolete.’

Article Five has been the core of the Nato treaty’s strength since it was formed amid a budding Cold War with communist states – particularly the Soviet Union – in 1949. — AFP