Rubio told lawmakers that the upcoming summit in Turkey ‘is probably the most important meeting in NATO’s history.’
President Donald Trump will attend the NATO summit in Turkey next month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, amid tensions between the president and the defense union over support during the Iran war.
Speaking before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 3, Rubio touched on Trump’s frustration that some NATO members were not allowing U.S. forces to use their bases for recent missions in the Middle East.
“The United States is still in the NATO alliance, and we’ll be there in Turkey to talk about all these topics. The president himself will be attending the next NATO meeting of heads of state, where all these points will be made clear,” Rubio said.
“We’re still in NATO, but NATO needs significant changes, and the president has made that clear. He is disappointed in NATO.”
Some NATO members have resisted supporting the United States’ campaign against the Iranian regime, leading to the Trump administration considering the reexamination of the defense alliance’s merit.
Trump has previously called NATO a “paper tiger” and said he was considering pulling out of the organization.
The next NATO summit will be held in Ankara, Turkey, on July 7 and 8.
Rubio told lawmakers on Wednesday that this meeting “is probably the most important meeting in NATO’s history,” because of the issues that have developed over the previous months.
Reciprocity in NATO Needed
In comments to lawmakers, Rubio reiterated points he had made several times before: that he remains a “strong supporter” of NATO, both personally and in the Senate, and that he still sees its utility.
“The problem with NATO, as I want to point out, is those bases that we have in the region is one of the reasons I used to argue why NATO was so important. It allowed the U.S. to project power and have power in case of contingencies,” he said.
“We had a contingency, and we had countries in NATO that said, ‘No, you can’t use our bases.’ Particularly Spain. Now, I want to be fair, there were other countries that have been extraordinarily cooperative and what they’ve helped us to do—some publicly and some privately.”
He said that a problem is that the United States is being asked to be drawn into European matters, while NATO allies are not always prepared to reciprocate when the United States needs support.
“I think the president’s irritation with NATO is that in a time of conflict and crisis where the United States had a need, you had members of this alliance—who are constantly asking us to get to get involved in European matters, like Ukraine and things of this nature—who, in our time, were actually telling us, ‘No, your tankers can’t use our air base. No, you can’t use it to refuel. No, you can’t use it for logistical support,’” Rubio said.
“What kind of alliance is that?”
