Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance said Donald Trump would keep the US in NATO if re-elected, although it was important that the transatlantic alliance was not “just a welfare client.”
“Donald Trump wants NATO to be strong. He wants us to stay in NATO,” the Ohio senator said on NBC Meet the press in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “But he also wants the NATO countries to actually bear their share of the defense burden.”
Trump regularly boasts that his pressure on European allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during his time in the White House led them to increase defense spending. At a rally in February, he caused a stir when he said he had once said this to a leader at a NATO meeting he would tell Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to those who have not fulfilled their obligations.
“We would stay in NATO,” Vance said on NBC when pressed for a direct answer.
Without setting explicit terms for the U.S. to remain in NATO, Vance criticized an imbalance in member countries’ commitments, pointing to Germany, Europe’s largest economy and a frequent target of Trump’s pressure during his presidency.
“Basically it’s the United Kingdom, a few other nations and the United States,” he said. “The problem with NATO is that Germany in particular has to spend more on security and defense.”
Read more: Germany is angering EU leaders by opposing common defense funding
Vance declined to call Russian President Vladimir Putin an enemy, noting that his cooperation would be necessary “if we ever want to end the war in Ukraine.” He called China the biggest threat to the US.
“I think he’s clearly an adversary,” Vance said of Putin. “He’s a competitor.”