Stoltenberg explained in an interview with the British newspaper “The Times” that during the 2018 NATO summit, Trump explicitly announced that he was considering leaving NATO, noting that he felt at that moment it could become “”. According to the memoirs of John Bolton, the former US National Security Advisor, Trump wanted at the time to pressure NATO leaders by threatening to withdraw unless member countries committed to spending 2% of their GDP on defense, before later retracting and announcing his support for the alliance while criticizing some countries for their low spending.
In the same context, Stoltenberg described the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan as “the greatest defeat in NATO’s history,” although he believed that the decision was ultimately the right one. He added that the events leading up to the fall of Kabul in August 2021 and the return of the Taliban to power marked the end of an era that spanned nearly 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan.
