NATO Secretary General anticipates a strong union with the United States, but argues that NATO “should be more European”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said this Friday that he believes the United States (USA) will maintain a “strong presence” in the future of the Atlantic Alliance, both at nuclear level and in conventional military terms.
“What I see at the moment is an increasingly European NATO, and Europeans really taking a step forward to take care of their own defense, but with a strong American presence in the future, both nuclear and conventional,” he told journalists at the Munich Security Conference (MSC), in Germany.
Rutte responded this way upon arrival at the conference, which began this Friday in Munich, when asked about how quickly European allies can assume their own defense.
“We have all the plans prepared, as you know, to guarantee this in the coming years, with the enormous investments that the Europeans are making now”, he stated.
When asked whether he thought Europe could become independent from the United States in matters of security and defense, the former Dutch Prime Minister said that everyone in NATO agrees that they must “remain united: both the United States, European countries and Canada”.
“That said, we also agree that NATO should be more European. Europeans should take more responsibility for their own defense and the good news is that they are doing so, as demonstrated by the increase in defense spending we are seeing,” he added.
Rutte made it clear that Europeans “are taking a step forward”.
“We will remain united with the United States, [que estarão] more anchored than ever in NATO, because they know that, after decades of requests, Europeans and Canada are paying more attention to collective defense, in particular spending”, he continued.
The secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance stated that this increase in defense investment is not just due to requests, but because it was necessary “due to Russian threats”.
On the eve of the start of the Munich Security Conference, a group of 16 former United States ambassadors to NATO and former Supreme Allied Commanders of the Alliance warned that the existence of the organization “is not an act of American generosity”.
It is rather “a strategic pact” that guarantees the United States, now led by President Donald Trump, “that it will continue to be the most powerful and economically secure nation in the world”, at a “fraction of the cost” of doing it alone, they highlighted on Thursday, in a statement.
In the statement, the 16 American diplomats and generals who have served in NATO over the past 25 years recalled that the organization “has been the cornerstone of the national security” of the United States and that withdrawing or reducing its presence would be highly damaging.
The Munich Security Conference kicked off this Friday with the confirmed presence of more than 60 heads of state and government, a hundred ministers and around a thousand participants from 120 countries.
The 62nd edition of the MSC takes place until Sunday in a context of instability and “deep uncertainty”, due to the policies of the North American President, Donald Trump, admitted the president of the conference, the German diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger.
Around 5,000 German police officers and those from four other countries were mobilized in Munich to guarantee security for the event, but also for the city where 21 demonstrations are called, including two against the Iranian regime, until Sunday.
