Saturday 21 / December / 2024
President Donald Trump says the U.S. is committed to Article 5 of the NATO charter, which requires each member of the alliance to come to the defense of any other. Linda So reports.
U.S. President Donald Trump publicly confirming for the first time his commitment to NATO's Article 5, which requires members of the alliance to defend each other if they come under attack.
"I'm committing the United States and have committed, but I'm committing the United States to Article 5."
Trump making the remarks from the White House Rose Garden on Friday during a joint news conference with the president of Romania.
His commitment coming just weeks after sowing doubts among allies, when he failed to specifically commit to the agreement during a summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, surprising his own foreign policy team.
Instead, he used his speech there to demand members pay more for the alliance's defense... an assertion he repeated on Friday.
"Certainly we are there to protect, that's one of there reasons I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force by paying the kind of money necessary to have that force."
Trump has been critical of NATO since his election campaign and even threatened to abandon U.S. allies in Europe if they did not spend enough on defense, though he has recently softened his tone.
