President Joe Biden closed the book on his predecessor’s arms-length handling of the partnership Monday during a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, in Brussels.
The meeting occurred roughly one hour prior to the full NATO summit, during which the U.S. president referred to his country’s “sacred obligation” to its allies as outlined in Article 5 of the alliance’s treaty.
“I just want all of Europe to know that the United States is there,” Biden continued. “The United States is there.”
Biden specifically called the alliance “critically important for U.S. interests in and of itself,” a far cry from comments President Donald Trump made about the body during his four years in office and before.
Before winning the 2016 election, Trump frequently called NATO “obsolete” and elaborated on his reasoning shortly before his inauguration in 2017.
“It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror,” he stated in an interview with the Times of London. “A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States.”
During his time in office, Trump frequently pressed NATO members, perhaps most notably Germany, to meet their defense spending requirements. He changed his tune during a joint press conference with Stoltenberg in April 2017, claiming NATO “made a change, and now they do fight terrorism.”
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“I said it was obsolete,” he proclaimed at the time. “It’s no longer obsolete.”
Notably, the traveling press was barred from viewing the Biden-Stoltenberg meeting in person Monday and was forced instead to report on the pair’s remarks through a streaming video feed.
#NATO VIDEO on LED screens:
Pres. Biden among #NATOSummit #OTAN leaders watching: pic.twitter.com/Byi1uixr9h
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 14, 2021
