Trump affirms commitment to NATO mutual defense

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Trump on Friday affirmed his commitment to NATO's Article 5, the mutual defense clause in the alliance's founding documents.

"I'm committing the United States to Article 5," Trump said at a press conference after meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis. "Certainly we are there to protect, and that's one of the reasons that I want people to make sure we have a very, very strong force by paying the kind of money necessary to have that force. But yes, absolutely, I'd be committed to Article 5."

When Trump spoke before NATO leaders in late May, he did not mention the clause, omitting two sentences affirming it that were written into an earlier draft of his speech and reportedly leaving NATO Europe leaders "appalled." For a deeper look at the effects of Trump's record of hostility toward NATO, check out this analysis from The Week's Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.