Nato chief promises ‘forceful response’ to any attack, as Trump remarks dismissed

The Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, has said that any attack on the western military alliance would be met with a “united and forceful response”, after the former US president Donald Trump invited Russia to attack member countries he perceived as not meeting their financial obligations.

Stoltenberg said in a statement: “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the US, and puts American and European soldiers at increased risk. I expect that regardless of who wins the presidential election, the US will remain a strong and committed Nato ally.”

He said Nato remained “ready and able to defend all allies”.

After Trump told a campaign rally in South Carolina that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any of the US’s Nato allies he felt were not paying their fair share, the Polish defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, wrote on X: “Nato’s motto ‘one for all, all for one’ is a concrete commitment.”

“Undermining the credibility of allied countries means weakening the entire Nato. No election campaign is an excuse for playing with the security of the alliance,” he added.

The EU internal market commissioner, Thierry Breton, told the French TV channel LCI that Trump’s comments on military spending by Nato members was not new. “We have heard that before … Nothing new under the sun,” he said.

Breton added that European leaders understood the EU needed to separately boost its own military spending and capacities and defence of sovereignty. “We cannot flip a coin about our security every four years depending on this or that election, namely the US presidential election,” he said.

He also questioned Trump’s account of a meeting with Nato leaders. At the political rally, Trump, who is in the lead to be the Republican nominee in this year’s US presidential election, claimed the president of “a big country” had asked him: “Well, sir, if we don’t pay, and we’re attacked by Russia – will you protect us?”

Trump said: “I said: ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?… No I would not protect you. In fact I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay.”

Breton told LCI that Trump’s account was incorrect. “There’s maybe a little problem with his memory – it was actually a female president, not of a country, but of the European Union,” Breton said, referring to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and a conversation she had with Trump in 2020.

In London, Lord (Peter) Ricketts, a member of the House of Lords, who had served as the permanent representative to Nato in Brussels, wrote on X: “Not very plausible that the President of a ‘big’ European country would ask him that (or call him Sir!). Trump seems to think that Nato is like a country club: you pay 2% of your GDP to the US which then provides defence services. Deeply corrosive of trust among Nato allies.”

Jan Lipavský, the Czech Republic’s minister for foreign affairs, said: “Nato is currently in the strongest position it has ever been, both because of the strong transatlantic link and because of the domestic deterrence and defence tasks that European allies are performing. Faced with the biggest threat since the end of the second world war, we are increasing defence budgets and acquiring new capabilities, many of which originate in the US.”

The White House spokesperson Andrew Bates, asked about Trump’s comments, said: “Encouraging invasions of our closest allies by murderous regimes is appalling and unhinged – and it endangers American national security, global stability and our economy at home.”

The Nato treaty contains a provision that guarantees mutual defence of member states if one is attacked.

Nato countries agreed in 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, to halt the spending cuts they had made after the cold war and move toward spending 2% of their GDPs on defence by 2024.

As of 2022, Nato reported that seven of what are now 31 Nato member countries were meeting that obligation – up from three in 2014. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has spurred additional military spending by some Nato members.

During his 2016 campaign, Trump alarmed western allies by warning that the US, under his leadership, might abandon its Nato treaty commitments and only come to the defence of countries that meet the alliance’s 2% target.

In campaign speeches, Trump, has remained sceptical of organisations such as Nato, often lamenting the billions the US spends on the military alliance whose support has been critical to Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s invasion.