Rubio's Blunt Truth on NATO's Value to the U.S.

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]And that is always driven by what is the value of NATO to the United States. I understand NATO's valuable to Europe and it should be. It also has to be valuable to the United States. So, we always have to make that argument in every administration and every era.

[00:00:12]And and that's what we're in the process of doing now is explaining, you know, this is the value of NATO to the United States.

[00:00:18]Related to that is what our force posture is within that alliance, what our contributions are. So, obviously, one of the things that I've always used and I've long been a advocate for NATO in my time in the Senate. One of the arguments I always made was that these bases in the region provided us logistical options that we wouldn't otherwise have. And when some of those bases are denied to you during a conflict that we're involved in, then you question whether that value is still there. So, that's going to have to be discussed. There's no doubt about it. I think there's also going to have to be some focus on how a year after the meeting at The Hague, how much progress has been made in terms of the increased contributions. There are some countries that have doubled their defense spending over the last few years. Then there are others that are still lagging. In the end, the goal is to have a NATO that is strong and the stronger our NATO allies are, the stronger NATO is going to be.