Republican presidential candidate JD Vance said Donald Trump would keep the US in NATO if re-elected, though it was important the transatlantic alliance was not “just a welfare client”.
“Donald Trump wants NATO to be strong. He wants us to stay in NATO,” the Ohio senator said on NBC Meet the press in an interview given on Sunday. “But he also wants NATO countries to actually carry their share of the defense burden.”
Trump regularly boasts that his pressure on European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization led him to increase defense spending during his time in the White House. In an appearance in February, he raised eyebrows by saying that he once told a leader at a NATO meeting that He would tell Russia to “do whatever the hell they want”. to those who did not fulfill their obligations.
“We would stay in NATO,” Vance said on NBC when asked for a straight answer.
Without setting explicit conditions for the US to remain in NATO, Vance criticized the imbalance of member countries’ commitments and singled out Germany, Europe’s largest economy and a frequent pressure point of Trump during his presidency.
“It’s effectively the UK, a couple of other nations and the United States,” he said. “The problem with NATO is that Germany in particular has to spend more on security, it has to spend more on defense.”
Read more: Germany Slams EU Leaders Against Joint Defense Funding
Vance declined to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as an enemy, suggesting his cooperation would be necessary “if we’re ever going to end the war in Ukraine.” He called China the biggest threat to the US.
“I think he’s clearly an adversary,” Vance said of Putin. “He’s a competitor.”
