NATO chief says alliance’s collective defense is “unconditional”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told a group of Norwegian reporters last week that the alliance’s collective defense, commonly known as Article V, does not hinge on any level of defense spending.

“Our security guarantees are absolute and unconditional,” Stoltenberg said, while also stressing that he supports all initiatives that would lead NATO countries to increase defense spending. Stoltenberg was in New York for the annual gathering of the United Nations General Assembly.

High-ranking American officials, including President Barack Obama, have long expressed frustration with European members not accepting a larger share of the alliance’s financial burden. President Obama went so far as to call out “free riders” in an interview with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.

But Republican nominee Donald Trump took the criticism one step further earlier this year, telling The New York Times he might not defend countries that fail to spend 2% of GDP on defense, as agreed to at the 2014 NATO summit in Wales.

The comments caused panic in capitals on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly in Eastern Europe. Estonia’s president Ilves Toomas took to twitter to defend his country’s defense spending levels and support for US action in Afghanistan.

Secretary-General Stoltenberg finds himself in a position he clearly wasn’t expecting when he took the job two years ago: convincing a major party nominee for president that NATO still holds value for the United States.

“A strong NATO is also an advantage for the United States,” Stoltenberg said. “We’ve seen two world wars cause a lot of uncertainty for the United States, and the only time NATO used its collective defense clause, Article V, it was in defense of the United States after September 11th.”

Stoltenberg has repeatedly refused to comment specifically on the presidential election, including during a trip to the White House this spring. In New York, when asked what he knows of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, he replied that he knows Clinton from her time as Secretary of State when Stoltenberg was the Prime Minister of Norway. Trump, on the other hand, he says he has never met.