Pres. Trump hosts NATO Secretary-General at White House

World Today

NATO is “no longer obsolete.” That was just one of the remarks made by U.S. President Donald Trump during a news conference with NATO’s Secretary-General at the White House on Wednesday. It’s a total turnaround from Trump’s past remarks on NATO.

CGTN’s Daniel Ryntjes reports.
Follow Daniel Ryntjes on Twitter @danielryntjes

The “America First” populist, who just three months ago called NATO “obsolete”, is now putting his ‘number one’ security priority within a multilateral institution, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said their key priority is getting the 28 member alliance. This will move to 29 members after Trump signed off on the admission of Montenegro earlier in the week to contribute 2 percent of their GDP to NATO’s military defense spending.

He calls it the biggest reinforcement of collective defense since the Cold War.

The two sides agreed that NATO should work more effectively together to tackle ISIL and other terrorist networks on and off the battlefield.

Donald Trump told Stoltenberg that he was looking forward to the NATO leaders summit next month in Brussels heading, or so it appears, toward a much more conventional form of U.S. foreign policy.