It Took a War for NATO Members to Actually Take Their Obligations Seriously With Biden at the Helm

Despite President Joe Biden’s claims that he helped strengthen NATO, a transatlantic alliance critically reliant on the U.S., it wasn’t until a war broke out in Eastern Europe that alliance members started taking its defense spending commitments seriously.

Biden has boasted on numerous occasions that he made NATO more powerful than former President Donald Trump did, helping to expand the alliance and restore its reputation on the global stage. But NATO members were spending less on defense under Biden until the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, prompting the alliance to finally increase spending, according to official alliance documents.

Biden claimed during a debate against former President Donald Trump on Thursday that NATO was “strong” under his administration and bragged about how he got “50 other nations around the world to support Ukraine,” warning that Trump would pull out of the alliance if reelected.

His comments echo remarks made weeks and months earlier, in which he claimed his administration was responsible for NATO’s success.

“Trump wants to eviscerate NATO. He thinks NATO is useless,” Biden told Time in an interview in June. “NATO is considerably stronger than it was when I took office. I put it together. Not only did I reestablish the fact that it was the strongest alliance in the history of the world, I was able to expand it.” (Read more from “It Took a War for NATO Members to Actually Take Their Obligations Seriously With Biden at the Helm” HERE)

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