From Washington Examiner: President Donald Trump faced a quick condemnation after questioning whether the NATO alliance would come to America’s aid during a time of need, even though the only time the alliance’s vital Article 5 was ever invoked was in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Article 5 of the NATO charter calls for every member to consider an attack on one of them to be an attack on all of them and if invoked, triggers an obligation for each member to come to the attacked member’s assistance.
The only time it’s been invoked since the alliance’s founding in 1949, a couple of years after the end of World War II, was on September 12, 2001, and several NATO countries ultimately sent troops to fight alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I’ve always said, ‘Will they be there, if we ever needed them?’ And that’s really the ultimate test,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with Fox Business Network in Davos, Switzerland. “And I’m not sure of that. I know that we would have been there, or we would be there, but will they be there?”
“We’ve never needed them. We have never really asked anything of them,” Trump added, downplaying their contributions. “You know, they’ll say they sent some troops to Afghanistan, or this or that. And they did — they stayed a little back, a little off the front lines.”
European officials expressed frustration.
“I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling and I am not surprised they have caused such hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured and, in fact, across the country,” U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Friday.
“NATO’s Article 5 has only been triggered once. The U.K. and NATO allies answered the U.S. call. And more than 450 British personnel lost their lives in Afghanistan,” U.K. member of Parliament and Defense Secretary John Healey said on social media. “Those British troops should be remembered for who they were: heroes who gave their lives in service of our nation.”
Read more at Washington Examiner
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