U.S. President Donald Trump is touting his influence over the NATO military alliance, which he said “calls me daddy” in an interview that focused in part on his vision for Europe.
The interview with Politico was released Tuesday, days after the Trump administration released a new national security strategy that sharply criticized European allies and said America’s goal “should be to help Europe correct its current trajectory.”
Yet Trump insisted in the interview he has no desire to get involved in European politics.
“I want to run the United States. I don’t want to run Europe,” he said.
“I’m involved in Europe very much. NATO calls me daddy,” he added, pointing to the alliance’s adoption this year of Trump’s push to increase members’ share of defence spending from two per cent of GDP to five per cent.
Trump had repeatedly threatened to not come to NATO allies’ defence in the event of an attack unless they stepped up their military spending.
Canada, a founding member of the NATO alliance, has said it will reach the two per cent target this year and will be spending 3.5 per cent of GDP on core defence needs by 2035, with the remaining 1.5 per cent covered by defence-related infrastructure.
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Trump’s new national security strategy says the U.S. should include “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
Asked if there are members that he believes shouldn’t be in NATO, Trump said there are “countries that are difficult for NATO” to deal with diplomatically, pointing to Turkey as an example.
“Whenever they have a problem with (Turkish President Recep) Erdogan, they ask me to call, because they can’t speak to him,” he said. “He’s a tough cookie. I actually like him a lot … and I always work it out with him.”
When asked if he feels NATO should stop accepting new members, Trump said, “there aren’t that many left,” without explaining what he meant.
NATO’s membership has grown from 12 members when it was founded in 1949 to 32 today. Finland and Sweden are the alliance’s newest members, joining in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
“It was always, long before (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, it was an understanding that Ukraine would not be going into NATO,” he added. “And now they’ve pushed.”
Ukraine applied for NATO membership after Russia invaded the country in 2022. While the bid gained support from the alliance and the Biden administration at the time, the U.S. under Trump has taken Russia’s position in opposing Ukraine’s membership in negotiations to end the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with NATO and European leaders in London on Monday as he seeks to shore up support amid U.S. pressure to accept a deal with Russia that includes conceding land.
Moscow has routinely criticized NATO expansion as a threat against Russia. The alliance insists it is defensive in nature.
The new U.S. national security strategy includes scathing critiques of European countries’ migration and free speech policies, suggesting they face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” and raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.
“Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” it says.
“As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
The strategy highlights the increased defence spending commitment pushed by Trump, which it says creates a “burden-sharing network” organized and supported by the U.S.
“The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,” it says.
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