NATO's future

Stoltenberg: Thought NATO would collapse under Trump

Former NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg feared that the alliance would collapse when Donald Trump took office as US president for the first time. He reveals this in his new book "On My Watch", Norwegian media reports.

He writes in particular about a NATO summit in July 2018.

"Everyone felt that it was about to collapse. The whole meeting, all the statements about unity. And with that, the whole of NATO was in acute danger", writes Stoltenberg.

According to Stoltenberg, many countries had such low confidence that the US, under Trump, would live up to its commitments within NATO that they considered putting the alliance on hold, waiting for a new president.

He also writes that Trump at one point asked if it was possible to kick Norway out of NATO if the country did not pay more.

Trump's drastic idea: Kick Norway out of NATO

During a meeting in 2018 with then-NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, Donald Trump asked if it was possible to kick Norway out of the military alliance. Stoltenberg writes this in his new book "On My Watch," Norwegian media reports. Trump was dissatisfied with Norway's failure to meet the requirement for how much money each country should invest in its defense.

- Can't Norway instead have a Swedish model, if they don't want to pay? Trump is said to have asked.

"It was the entrepreneurial mindset that struck a chord. If Norway didn't want to pay for NATO in full, maybe they would get half NATO, a looser connection [...] That was his logic," Stoltenberg writes.