Jim Townsend: NATO progress tied to Trump

AlArabiya English

Much of NATO’s progress can be attributed to the leadership of President Donald Trump, Jim Townsend, Former Deputy Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO, says.

Transcript

00:00I mean, with hindsight, was President Trump good for NATO in the first term?

00:04Well, I think you can make a case that he was, you know, with a lot of hindsight. I

00:11wouldn't have said that at the time. But I think it helped prepare the Allies to make

00:16the tough decisions about how to deal with Putin. Spending more money, deploying forces,

00:22increasing the militaries, that kind of thing. I think Trump came in and gave it a real shove.

00:29And in the past number of years, the Alliance wasn't moving as quickly, or Allies weren't

00:35moving as quickly as the Alliance wanted them to move, in terms of dealing with Putin and

00:41dealing with what's happening in Ukraine. When Trump came in, he gave everyone a real

00:45shove, not because of Putin. He gave them a shove because he felt we were being taken

00:50advantage of. So the message was not exactly a message that everyone appreciated, but I

00:56think the shove was kind of needed. And a lot of the progress made by NATO since then

01:02was, could be linked to not just Putin, but also to Trump.

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