Fact check: Debunking five false Trump claims about NATO

Washington CNN —

For a third straight presidential election campaign, former President Donald Trump is being serially inaccurate about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance.

Trump caused a transatlantic uproar this weekend by claiming at a Saturday campaign rally that he had once told the president of a “big” NATO country that if that country didn’t pay its “bills,” he would not protect the country from a Russian invasion and would even “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want.”

Trump’s incendiary remarks contained a familiar false claim. His assertion about NATO allies supposedly having failed to pay “bills” is not true, as fact-checkers at CNN and elsewhere have pointed out for years.

And Trump has for years made a variety of other false claims about spending by NATO and its members. Here is a fact check of five of his repeated statements.

Spending by NATO members

Trump has long claimed that various NATO members have failed to pay their “bills,” “dues” or “NATO fees,” that they “owe us a tremendous amount of money” or that they “owe NATO billions of dollars.”

Facts First: All of these Trump claims are false. While a majority of NATO members do not meet the alliance’s target of each member spending a minimum of 2% of gross domestic product on defense, the 2% target is a “guideline” that does not create bills, debts or legal obligations if it is not met. In fact, the guideline doesn’t require payments to NATO or the US at all. Rather, it simply requires each country to spend on their own defense programs.

When Trump was president, the guideline was written in forgiving language that made clear that it was not a firm commitment. That version of the guideline, created