Marco Rubio confirmed that the US will remain a member of NATO and called for an increase in defense spending to 5 % of GDP, which has not yet reaches any state of the Alliance.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday before the NATO Ministers’ meeting in Brussels rejected the “hysteria” regarding US membership in the Alliance and confirmed that Washington would “stay” in it. He also called on NATO to agree on a “realistic path” to spend 5 percent of GDP in defense, TASR reports according to AFP.
“President Trump clearly said he was supporting NATO. We will stay in NATO,” Rubio said before his first meeting with NATO Foreign Ministers in Brussels. According to him, Trump’s administration is not against the alliance, but wants Member States to comply with their obligations. In this context, he called on the members to invest five percent of GDP in defense.
None of the Alliance states currently five percent of GDP in defense. The closest to this goal is Poland, which would like to invest 4.7 percent this year. The United States spend almost 3.4 percent of their GDP in defense.
The current US administration under the leadership of President Trump is pushing Europe to strengthen its own defense, and at the same time threatens to review the US military presence on the continent due to its priorities in other regions. This raises concerns about European leaders who have met at several summits in recent weeks and discussed the war in Ukraine and the future of European defense.
