Prague, July 21 (CTK) – The challenging of mutual military aid in NATO is a dangerous idea, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said yesterday in reaction to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s statement that the USA need not necessarily help other NATO members if attacked by Russia.
“The creation of additional criteria for providing military aid beyond the framework of the Washington treaty is a very unfortunate and dangerous idea. It in fact means to bury the Washington treaty,” he said.
In an interview for The New York Times daily, Trump said the United States may not defend some of its European allies against a possible Russian aggression if he becomes president. Speaking about the Baltic states, he said it would depend whether the given country fulfilled its obligations to the USA.
Zaoralek said the article on collective defence from the NATO treaty signed in Washington has been activated only once so far when the USA did so after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
However, all U.S. presidents have the right to define their own foreign policy in cooperation with the U.S. Congress, Zaoralek (Social Democrats, CSSD) said.
“I firmly believe that the United States will continue being our key ally in NATO,” he said.
“The securing of common defence is not in the interest of Europeans, but also in the interest of the USA. In the 20th century, the USA left Europe twice and in both cases it finally had to return to Europe, but with far greater costs and sacrifices. We are living a common story and we should never forget this,” Zaoralek said.
After Warsaw talks of the Visegrad Group (V4) prime ministers yesterday, Czech PM Bohuslav Sobotka (CSSD) said the whole V4 is interested in NATO’s stability.
In reaction to Trump’s statement, Sobotka said he expects the United States to remain a reliable partner in NATO irrespective of which of the two presidential candidates wins.
“I am glad that the United Kingdom confirmed that it wants to stay part of NATO, although the British citizens decided to leave the European Union,” Sobotka said.
Czech Deputy Prime Minister Pavel Belobradek (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) said he can understand Trump.
“Though the formulation is rather unfortunate, there is some reason in it. The spending of most of the prevailing majority of the member countries does not reach the sum that they ought to pay in NATO. It seems no wonder that the Americans who pay a substantial part of the defence budget and bleed instead of the others have the feeling that the others are free riders,” Belobradek told Czech Television (CT).
