The United States needs its European allies to face down the threat of Russia and China, the deputy secretary general of Nato has told The Telegraph.
There are fears Donald Trump could halt military support for Ukraine if he wins November’s presidential election, or even withdraw Washington’s security guarantee for Europe entirely.
But Mircea Geoana said that, with the West locked in an era of “great power competition” with autocratic countries such as Russia, its ally China, North Korea and Iran, the transatlantic alliance was more important than ever.
“As much Europe needs America, America, I think needs all its allies,” he told The Telegraph.
“The strategic reality is that China is a formidable challenger and that Russia and China and all the others together will create massive attempts to disrupt American power.”
He added: “There is an intense aggressive interest from these countries to basically challenge the world order which was introduced after the end of the Second World War.
“In this epic struggle America will need not only its own strength, but also all the allies in the Alliance.”
Trump criticised
Mr Trump has warned he would let Russia do “whatever they hell they want” to any Nato member who does not meet its alliance defence spending target of 2 per cent of economic output.
He was widely criticised for undermining the principle that an attack on one member is one on all.
“We worked for four years with president Trump in the White House. The beginning was quite tumultuous,” Mr Geoana said of a period when Mr Trump branded Nato “obsolete”.
But he said that Mr Trump had been “quite positive” about Nato in his final State of the Union address. He added that the race with Joe Biden was “way too close to call”.
Mr Geoana said: “I think strategic logic will prevail and we are confident that America will continue as they’ve done for the last 75 years and continue to be a key player.”
The United States remains the single largest donor of weapons and aid to Ukraine and some believe Europe is not doing enough.
Lord Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary, has travelled to the US to convince Republicans to drop their Congress veto on the long-delayed $60 billion aid to Ukraine and to meet Mr Trump.
“There is still a little bit of miscommunication from our side to the US Congress on how much non-US allies are doing,” Mr Geoana, the first Romanian to be deputy secretary general and the first from a former Iron Curtain country, said.
“We do a lot. Even Iceland, they don’t have an army but they contribute with cargo transport and things like that. We should do a better job in communicating that.”
In February, Nato announced a record 18 of its 32 members would meet the spending target.
Mr Geoana, who took up his post under Jens Stoltenberg, the Secretary General, in 2019, said: “On aggregate European allies are spending 2 per cent – some will be more, some a little less – but all allies have a plan to reach 2 per cent in the relative near future.”
“Hundreds of billions of US dollars more has been invested in defence. This has to be sustained,” Mr Geoana said. “But the 2 per cent is not the target it once was. It is the base, not the ceiling,”
European countries are looking to increase defence spending to supply Ukraine and replenish their supplies after sending arms to Kyiv. But the challenge is that Russia has shifted to a wartime economy, Mr Geoana said.
“I think the number one issue now is how to ramp up our industrial production base,” he said.
The European Union is mulling plans to ramp up its defence industry. However, some of Brussels’ plans, pushed for by France, include incentives to EU members to “buy European” and other programmes limited to bloc members only.
Mr Geoana – who will leave his job later this year – called for a “transatlantic industrial base” and not something which creates “unnecessary walls” between allies.
“If you look at the EU member states today it’s roughly 20 per cent of the aggregate defence investment in Nato, 80 per cent is non-EU. Even if the EU makes even a bigger effort, It’s still not sufficient,” he said.
The EU plans are backed by Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who wants to build up Europe’s ability to act without Washington.
The issue has caused disagreement between France and Germany, which angered Paris after signing a deal for a missile shield using US-Israeli technology last year.
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