A top NATO general on Wednesday said that US president-elect Donald Trump’s suggestion that the US might abandon its NATO commitments is not serious, because the treaty is so binding and important that no president “would dare” change it.
Czech Army General Petr Pavel said NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause is quite clear that NATO will come to the defense, unconditionally, of any fellow member who is attacked.
Pavel, chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, made the remarks ahead of this weekend’s Halifax International Security Forum — the first major national security conference since Trump’s election.
Trump said during the presidential campaign that he would review allies’ financial contributions — in this case contributions owed by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — before acting under NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause if they were attacked by Russia.
Trump has also called NATO “obsolete” and a bad deal for the US.
“The continuity of the trans-Atlantic relationship, spanning almost 70 years, is simply so binding that no American president would dare be able to change it, and even not willing, because we understand on sides on both sides of the Atlantic that NATO is as important to European allies as it is to North America and we have a treaty that is binding to all of us,” Pavel said. “I really think that there is no serious threat there to challenging the principles of NATO.”
US administrations have complained that many NATO members are not footing their share of the alliance’s bills.
The US accounts for more than 70 percent of all NATO defense spending. Only four other allies — Britain, Estonia, Greece and Poland — meet the minimum 2 percent of GDP on defense that NATO requires.
Trump’s idea that the spending target would be a prerequisite for the US to defend them is an abrupt break for the most powerful member of NATO.
“Article 5 is quite clear,” Pavel said. “I believe this commitment will be met whatever the situation. I also believe that it is necessary that all European allies do their best to meet their commitments.”
Pavel said it is “absolutely justified” that pressure will be stepped up on members to meet their obligations and said the US is carrying too much of the burden, but he took issue with Trump slagging NATO.
“I would absolutely not call NATO obsolete. NATO is relevant as ever,” he said.
Pavel said Russia is pursing political objectives through military force and that is unacceptable in the 21st century.
“We are witnesses to the first illegal change of boundaries since the second World War by force,” he said in reference to Crimea.
Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 from Ukraine following a hastily called referendum, a move that led to Western sanctions.
A separatist insurgency also erupted in eastern Ukraine the following month.
Pavel said he hopes Trump will moderate his remarks now that he is the president elect.
In its eighth year, the Halifax International Security forum attracts top defense and security officials from Western democracies. About 300 people gather each year.
US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work and US National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers are among the speakers this year, as are US senators Tim Kaine and John McCain.
Kaine is to be honored at a dinner tonight for leading the Democratic delegation to the forum for the fourth year.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of