Donald Trump has suggested he has no interest in continuing with NATO and may even pull the United States out of the intergovernmental organization.
The president has done much to anger the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's members this year, strongly implying he would take Greenland by force if necessary. His administration's strikes on Iran last month marked another contentious point for the president and his relationship with NATO, as he called on member nations to back the war.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Trump said, “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way."
Trump went on to use the war in Ukraine as an example of where he felt the US had been let down by NATO members and other governments.
Trump added, "Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic.
"We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us."
The president's comments on NATO follow on from Secretary of State Marco Rubio denouncing the intergovernmental organization.
In an interview with Hashem Ahelbarra of Al Jazeera, the Donald Trump appointee criticized the NATO alliance for not backing the US war on Iran, and then stated, “I think it was very disappointing. You have this – and again, look, the President and our country will have to reexamine all of this after this operation is over."
"But one of the reasons why NATO is beneficial to the United States is it gives us basing rights for contingencies. It allows us to station troops and aircraft and weapons in parts of the world that we wouldn’t normally have bases, and that includes in much of Europe.”