Former US national security advisor Keith Kellogg said that during his tenure in President Donald Trump’s first presidential term (2017-2021), he had advised the US leader to reconsider Washington’s military relations with Europe within the framework of NATO.
“I told the president … ‘Maybe you ought to talk about a tiered relationship with NATO’,” Kellogg told Fox News, adding that the US “needs to develop a new NATO, for lack of a better term, a new defensive alignment with Europe.”
The former presidential envoy for Ukraine further noted that the transatlantic military bloc, which originally consisted of 12 countries, now includes 32 states, thus consisting of a “very bloated architecture.” He also accused European countries of failing to invest in defence expenditure, and relying overly on US protection.
“When you look at the Brits right now, they could barely deploy forces: they have two aircraft carriers, both under maintenance. Their brigades are like one out of six that work,” Kellogg stressed. “We need to realise that and say, ‘Well, we need something different,'” he pointed out.
Trump’s criticism of NATO has only grown in his second term, as he has repeatedly slammed partner states in the alliance for refusing to provide their support to the joint US-Israeli military operation against Iran.
As per US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Washington will to continue to reassess its NATO’s value once the war against Iran is complete, even as Trump has demanded that the bloc, and especially its European members take much greater responsibility in upholding their defence; leading to much tensions emerging between the bloc and the US.
