NATO secretary general Mark Rutte has delivered a reality check to Donald Trump, telling him that one NATO soldier died for every two Americans in Afghanistan after the US President doubted the Western alliance.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland yesterday, Trump said, ‘I’m not sure that they’d be there for us if we gave them the call’, as he tried to rally momentum for his now-abandoned plan to acquire Greenland from Denmark.
‘I know them all very well. I’m not sure that they’d be there. I know we’d be there for them. I don’t know that they would be there for us,’ the US President said.
The claims, however, overlook the fact that NATO member countries suffered hundreds of deaths during the Afghanistan war, triggered after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.
Britain alone lost 457 troops, with France, Germany, Italy and Denmark also suffering many deaths.
Rutte told Trump: ‘There’s one thing I heard you say yesterday and today. You were not absolutely sure Europeans would come to the rescue of the US if you will be attacked. Let me tell you, they will and they did in Afghanistan.’
The rebuttal came after Trump called Denmark – which had the highest per capita death toll among coalition forces in Afghanistan – ‘ungrateful’ for US protection during World War II.
‘For every two Americans who paid the ultimate price, there was one soldier from another NATO country who did not come back to his family – from the Netherlands, from Denmark and particularly from other countries,’ the NATO chief said.
NATO secretary general Mark Rutte has delivered a reality check to Donald Trump, telling him that one NATO soldier died for every two Americans in Afghanistan after the US President doubted the Western alliance
‘So you can be assured, absolutely, if ever the United States was under attack, your allies will be with you. There is an absolute guarantee. I really want to tell you that because it pains me if you think it is not,’ Rutte told Trump.
In an astonishing climbdown following his meeting with Rutte, the US President declared that the two had agreed ‘the framework of a future deal’ on Greenland as well as ‘the entire Arctic Region’.