Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened a NATO meeting in Washington Thursday by dismissing “tired excuses” about the political difficulty of raising defense spending, a jab at Germany a day after Vice President Mike Pence blasted the ally for not contributing its fair share to the security bloc.
“Now is not the time to repeat tired excuses that our citizens don’t support increased defense spending or security spending,” Pompeo said. “Each nation has a duty to make the case to our people. We, as leaders, have a duty to make the case to our citizens about why this work, why these resources are important to keep not only our own countries but our alliance strong.”
Pompeo’s rebuke marked the third day in a row top U.S. officials have publicly demanded allies (and Germany, in particular) to bear more of the NATO defense burden while European and Canadian foreign ministers are in Washington to celebrate the alliance’s 70th anniversary. NATO nations committed in 2014 to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on military capabilities, but Germany’s latest budget proposes defense spending of just 1.3 percent.
“The United States pays for a very big share of NATO — a disproportionate share,” President Trump said Tuesday at a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “I mean, Germany, honestly, is not paying their fair share.”
Pence turned up the heat on Wednesday, declaring at a NATO outreach event that “Germany must do more.”
“NATO is a mutual defense pact, not a unilateral security guarantee,” Pence said. “We need all allies to contribute to this joint endeavor and honor their commitments.” He added that “too many others are falling short, and, as we all acknowledge, Germany is chief among them.”
Germany defended itself at the same event later that day, with foreign minister Heiko Maas emphasizing that military spending provokes “heated discussions” in his country because of the legacy of World War II.
“These debates are necessary in view of Germany’s history,” Maas said. “Instead of only talking about ability or willingness to honor commitments with the alliance, we should also make one thing clear: NATO may be a security alliance, but above all, it’s an alliance of values, and it has a political function.”
Pompeo indicated last week he doesn’t accept such reasoning. He told the National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit that German officials regularly make that argument to him privately. “When I talk to my counterparts, they will begin by saying, ‘America needs to do X and Y because Russia poses a threat.’ And then you ask them, ‘Well, that’s awesome. Tell me what you’re prepared to do.’ And they say, ‘It’s tough. Our voters just really don’t like to spend money on defense.'” Pompeo laughed and said, “I mean, yeah, folks in America are crazy about it.”
The secretary gave Germany a very public reply Thursday as he opened a day of meetings for the foreign ministers of NATO’s 29 member nations.
“This work to convince our citizens of the importance, the relevance, the intrinsic centrality of this institution falls to each of us and the other leaders of our countries,” he said. “I’ll close with this: The founders of NATO perceived with absolute and total clarity that the threat, the Soviet menace was real and that Communism posed a true threat. They were not timid in responding to it.”
