Europe will receive new bad news from the US, including about the NATO “cavalry”. “You'll soon find out,” says the Pentagon chief
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth again criticized Washington's European allies on Saturday, accusing them of ignoring calls to strengthen their defenses for “too long” and urging them to refrain from “teaching moral lessons”, reports AFP.
The Pentagon chief warned of “major decisions” ahead on European security in a speech at a major defense conference in Singapore, the Shangri-La Dialogue.
He praised Asian countries who, according to him, “have long understood that the foundation of a sustainable partnership is not based on idealistic values, but on a concrete alignment of national interests.”
“When our interests converge, we act together with determination. When our interests diverge, we adapt with pragmatism, without drama and without preaching. I think Western Europe could learn from this,” he declared.
Picking up on the Trump administration's highly critical stance towards the Europeans, Hegseth reproached them for having for too long espoused “empty globalist rhetoric about a rules-based international order while European capitals widened their borders and emptied their militaries of substance”.
US President Donald Trump has long called for Europeans to take more responsibility for their own security. He wants to reduce the American military presence on the Old Continent, a topic that has come up again in recent weeks, in the context of their refusal to support his war against Iran.
“Europe and NATO have important decisions to make and you will know more soon,” Hegseth said on Saturday at the Shangri-La Dialogue, the annual intergovernmental security conference in Singapore.
“For too long, polite appeals to our European allies to spend more on their own defense have fallen on deaf ears,” he pointed out. “They're finally starting to catch up.”
Under pressure from Donald Trump, NATO last year set a goal of collectively investing 5 percent of its members' GDP in defense, but most of the countries targeted are still a long way from that goal.
At a recent meeting of the Atlantic Alliance in Sweden, the head of US diplomacy, Marco Rubio, confirmed to Europeans that they should learn to live with fewer US soldiers.
He indicated that an adjustment to what some in NATO call the “cavalry,” the reservoir of forces that can be mobilized within 180 days if needed, will be announced soon.
