On Tuesday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “The Brief,” Latvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Baiba Braže said that NATO allies will agree to spend 5% on defense and that “is the doing of Mr. Trump.” And that’s important because they face real threats.
Braže stated, “[T]he, basically, decisions that [have] been made, formally, it will be confirmed tomorrow, that allies agreed to spend 5% on defense and security is the doing of Mr. Trump. And I think that is so important that allies actually commit to that, because the threats are real. The threats are real, both from Russia, but also others. The challenges from China, the terrorists, and so on and so forth. So, we have to be serious about security and defense to have prosperity and also the perspective of stability.”
Host Jim Sciutto then asked, “As you know, some leaders of NATO allies, the German Chancellor Merz among them, have been quite public in saying that Europe cannot rely on U.S. leadership for its own defense anymore, and, to some degree, has to rely on itself, go it alone. And I wonder if you share that concern.”
Braže answered, “Listen, I think we have to do several things at the same time. We have to be serious about defense spending and our own defense. In Europe, as you said, the Baltic states, Poland, a number of others, including our generous hosts, the Netherlands, have made those decisions to clearly advance on defense spending. And there are others who have done that. So, tomorrow, there will be 32 of us. And that will lead us to having European and Canadian allies at 80% of NATO’s defense spending. That is a number we haven’t had for a very long time, actually, most likely since Dwight Eisenhower’s time. So, that is something that is historical, that is significant, and, again, that’s because we have real threats. We have real threats, whether it’s in America, whether it’s in Europe, in the Middle East, or in the Indo-Pacific. And we don’t know where exactly what will arise. So, that ability to have the forces, the capabilities that we need, but also the culture of readiness, so that we exercise together, that we are able to project power and respond very quickly. And you rightly said, about the particular angle that the Baltic states have, we have that experience with Russia that we never wanted — or with [the] Soviet Union at the time, but we also know that there were people who never believed that we [would] regain the independence, but we made it possible because we believed in ourselves. And that is something else, also, that we have to remember. The trust in NATO, belief in our own strengths, and that is why we need to invest, and that’s what we are doing.”
She later added that the U.S. should pass the Russia sanctions package in Congress, but the timeline isn’t up for her to say, but it should be “quite soon.”
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