MADRID: The United States has praised Spain\u2019s contribution to NATO, the Spanish defense minister said Monday, after President Donald Trump suggested expelling the country from the alliance for not meeting his military spending target.<\/p>\n
Last week, the United States announced the withdrawal of some troops from the alliance\u2019s sensitive eastern European flank, on the front line against Russia during the invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
But the Pentagon simultaneously said Spain\u2019s contingent was playing \u201ca fundamental and essential role for the defense of Europe and policies of deterrence,\u201d Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles said.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon \u201ccongratulated Spain\u201d for \u201ccontributing to the reinforcement of the Atlantic Alliance\u201d and its more than 700 troops in Latvia, she added at a security forum in Madrid.<\/p>\n
\u201cFaced with those who want to say Spain is not a committed ally, Spain is a committed ally… and the Department of War recognized that last week,\u201d added Robles, referring to the US defense ministry by its new name.<\/p>\n
The revelation contrasts with recent remarks by Trump, who threatened to expel and impose tariff \u201cpunishment\u201d on Spain, which was NATO\u2019s lowest defense spender in relative terms last year.<\/p>\n
In June, the 32-nation alliance agreed to massively boost defense spending to five percent of annual economic output over the next decade under pressure from Trump, who has raised doubts about the US commitment to European security.<\/p>\n
But Spain insisted it would not need to hit the headline figure, saying it should meet its capacity objectives rather than fixed spending targets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MADRID: The United States has praised Spain\u2019s contribution to NATO, the Spanish defense minister said Monday, after President Donald Trump suggested expelling the country from the alliance for not meeting his military spending target. Last week, the United States announced the withdrawal of some troops from the alliance\u2019s sensitive eastern European flank, on the front …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89086,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89063\/revisions\/89086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}