US President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton had recently claimed he worries about the future of NATO because of Trump’s tendency to want to bring US forces home from abroad.
“NATO MEMBER STATES STILL HAVE SMALL DEFENCE BUDGETS”
According to Bolton, he and the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo decided to convince the president to stay in the bloc, but, possibly reduce US contributions.
US President Donald Trump on Saturday rejected the claims saying he did not want the US to leave NATO.
In an interview with the Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen, Trump criticized member states’ small defence budgets.
“Even 2 percent of GDP was also ‘too little,” he said. “I had some that were paying almost nothing, and now they’re paying. And they asked me the big question: Would you leave if — and I said, ‘Yeah, I would leave.’ And if you don’t give that answer, they’re not going to pay,” the US president added..