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NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is set to travel next week to Washington to meet with President Trump amid tensions over the U.S. cutting the number of troops and equipment it would provide to its European allies should they be attacked.
Rutte will meet Wednesday with Trump at the White House, according to a Friday announcement from the military alliance.
He also will meet with senior Trump administration officials and members of Congress during the three-day trip, which starts Tuesday.
Rutte’s visit would come after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday ripped into NATO allies while announcing a new six-month review of U.S. troop deployments in Europe, accusing the alliance of being a “paper tiger.”
Meeting with his counterparts at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Hegseth said the review would ensure the alliance moves “fast and irreversibly toward Europe leading,” but he did not say whether it will result in a drawdown of U.S. deployments to the continent.
“President Trump has been very clear on this point for many years and over two administrations,” Hegseth said. “And for too long, NATO has been a paper tiger and a one-way street. No more.”
The trip also follows the U.S. informing its European allies earlier this month it would reduce the number of fighter jets and warships it would deploy for NATO’s response in the early stages of a conflict, The New York Times reported last week.
Trump has lambasted NATO allies for not supporting the U.S. in the Iran war, criticizing some European countries for declining to offer their bases for U.S. aircraft set to be deployed to the Middle East.
The U.S. president also has ripped into Europe’s collective stance on the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran shut down during the conflict.
The Iran war has further inflamed an already tense relationship between Trump and NATO, which he has long pushed to rely heavily on American military support.
Last year, NATO countries made a commitment to invest 5 percent of gross domestic product annually on defense spending, but Trump insists they must move more quickly on reaching that goal.
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