Overview

• In an excerpt from his book Under My Watch published by the Guardian, Jens Stoltenberg recounts a 2018 summit confrontation where Donald Trump questioned the value of the alliance and threatened to scale back U.S. support.
• Stoltenberg writes that Trump claimed the United States covered 80–90% of NATO costs, spent 4% of GDP on defense, vowed to pay only what Germany paid, and said the U.S. did not need NATO.
• Fearing a walkout or a statement refusing to defend allies, Stoltenberg says he believed the summit could collapse and the alliance’s security guarantees could be left in doubt.
• He also describes ordering NATO staff in 2017 to avoid mocking Trump, warning that leaks of such behavior could damage relations with Washington.
• Reporting ties the revelations to June’s Hague summit, where members set a conditional goal to lift total outlays toward 5% of GDP by 2035, including 3.5% for defense and 1.5% for infrastructure, as Russian officials decry militarization while calling the impact on Russia’s security limited.