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From his mouth to your ears. It's Brian Kilmeade. Hi, we're back. It's my pleasure to bring in secretary general of NATO, Jan Stoltenberg, who's tenure is about to come to a close voluntarily.
He was asked to stay on another year because no one could agree on a successor and most everybody agreed he was doing a great job. And now NATO has never has been tested like no other time before. And are they responding?
Are they up to the challenge? Primarily coming from Russia and their new best friends. Mr. Secretary, welcome back.
Thanks so much for having me. Mr. Secretary, what's your reaction to President Putin's visit alliance military arrangement with North Korea? It demonstrates once again that all the Italian powers like Russia, North Korea are more and more aligned. And that also applies for China and Iran, which are now strongly supporting President Putin's war aggression against Ukraine. So it demonstrates that what happens in Ukraine is not only about Europe and Ukraine, it's about Asia. So if Putin wins in Ukraine, it will also be a win for North Korea and not least for Beijing and China. Ukraine might have won already if North Korea didn't provide the artillery and Iran didn't provide the drones and China the dual-use weaponry.
What can you do about this? First of all, it's important that we ensure that they don't win in Ukraine because that's the test. They want us to fail, the US to fail, NATO to fail in Ukraine. And that will be a tragedy for Ukrainians, but it will also be dangerous for all of us. And as the Japanese Prime Minister said some months ago, is that what happens in Ukraine today can happen in Asia tomorrow.
So Ukraine, the war in Ukraine is about much more than just Ukraine. I think the main message to China, which is the main supporter of the Russian war effort, is that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot continue to have normal trade relationships with European NATO allies and continue to fuel the biggest and most dangerous war we have seen on the European continent since the Second World War. So at some stage, there has to be some consequences for trade and economic relations.
And Mr. Secretary, one thing you could do is rally the European markets as well as the American markets to start hitting them with trade relations and hit them with tariffs and restrict some of their goods. They recognize economic threats, correct? Do you think NATO is on the same page with this?
Would you encourage that? Well, I may declare that unless China's behavior doesn't change, and if China continues to be the main provider of dual-use equipment, microelectronics, microprocessors, which are used to build the drones, the bombs, the missiles that Russia is using against Ukraine, then it has to have a cost. It's too early for me to say exactly what allies will be able to agree to, and it will not be NATO as an organization that will make decisions on economic sanctions. That's for individual allies, the United States, Canada, but also then European allies, many of them part of the European Union. But NATO is a platform for allies to raise this issue, and I raised the issue that there has to be cost consequences for China to continue to move forward.
It would certainly help. You announced this week that 23 nations are hitting their 2 percent spending on their defense GDP. The nations that have joined that 2 percent and the ones that have not.
Who are the ones that have not yet? Well, there are some allies, that's Spain, Italy, and Canada, and this is a public list, so everyone can go to NATO's homepage and see those allies. But the big thing is that NATO allies, together in total, has delivered. If you take defense spending across Europe and Canada, they are actually now spending 2 percent in total of GDP on defense. When we made the pledge to increase defense spending back in 2014, only three out of all NATO allies spent 2 percent or more on defense.
Now it's actually 23. This is record high, and it demonstrates that actually European allies are seriously stepping up, delivering what they promised. And the United States, some allies are actually spending more as percent of GDP on defense than the United States.
So this is really good news. The U.S. is not carrying the burden alone. Allies are stepping up.
Yeah, and Poland actually spends more percentage on their GDP than anybody else. But Mr. Secretary, what about this Russians working behind the scenes surreptitiously, covertly, to hurt NATO members, whether it's through elections, whether it's through some cyber attacks or something else? So far, we haven't had innocent people die, but that seems to be Putin's objective.
How do you handle a more aggressive, more complex Vladimir Putin? Well, we have imposed a lot of, we have implemented many actions to counter Russia's hostile acts against NATO allies. This is part about identifying what is going on.
So better intelligence, sharing intelligence, is important. And the sharing of intelligence between NATO allies have actually helped to prevent some of the sabotage, hostile actions that Russian security services have planned against NATO allies. There have been several arrests in the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, and other European countries, and also Russian security operatives and diplomats have been expelled from NATO territory. So sharing intelligence, taking legal actions, and also expelling people who are actually also responsible for hostile actions are among the actions we have been taking to protect ourselves against these malign activities of Russian operatives.
What's your frustration with the U.S.? If you could prove anything with their role in NATO, what would it be? The United States is by far the biggest NATO ally, and I'm confident the United States will remain a strong NATO ally. I think the only thing I would like to see is that the United States recognizes even clearer that strong NATO is not only good for Europe, it's also very good for the United States.
It makes the United States safer. In NATO, the United States has something no other power has. Russia and China has nothing like that, more than 30 friends and allies.
The United States is 25 percent of the world's economy. Together with NATO allies, you are 50 percent of the world economy and 50 percent of the world's military. So NATO makes the United States stronger and more capable of dealing, for instance, with China and the security challenges China's posing to all of us. Do you have any doubt if President Trump is to win the next election, that he'd want to stay in NATO? I'm confident that regardless of the outcome of the U.S. elections, the U.S. will continue to be a strong NATO ally, again, because it is in the interest of the United States, but also because the main criticism from former President Trump was actually not primarily against NATO. It has been against NATO allies not spending enough on NATO. And the good news is that that's exactly what NATO allies now are doing. They have significantly stepped up, record high increase in defense spending, 18 percent this year, and 23 allies at 2 percent, and many actually quite significantly above 2 percent. So this is good news.
Allies are stepping up. So it looks like Dutch Prime Minister Mark Root, who visited with Joe Biden the other day, who visited with Joe Biden in the past, and I guess he had to win over Romania. He was asked twice before the third time. He actually looks like he's going to get the job. Is he going to be your successor?
And how do you view Mark Root? So I expect the formalization to be made next week, and I welcome the selection of Mark Root very much. He is a good friend, a good colleague. I worked with him for many years, also when I was prime minister of Norway and he was the prime minister of Netherlands. And he knows NATO well. He's a strong supporter of the transatlantic bond, Europe and North America together. And he will be a perfect secretary-general of NATO. So my focus now is on the preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Washington next month.
And then I'm looking forward to handing over the responsibility to see him on the 1st of October later this year. Is this the most dangerous you felt the world was since you got the job, number one, and maybe since the alliance was birthed? It's very hard to compare, for instance, the Cuba missile crisis with what we see now. But I think it's great to say that it's more dangerous and more complex and more unpredictable than it has been for decades. And that makes it just even more important that we stand together, North America and Europe. No one can tell exactly what will the next crisis, what will the next war be. But what we can say with certainty is that as long as we stand together, we will prevail.
We will be able to defend and protect all allies and prevent a military attack on NATO, because we are by far the strongest military force in the world when we put North America and Europe together. Well, by all accounts, you did a fantastic job. I mean, people praise you up and down. And you did a great job of not being to one party or the next. Thanks so much, Mr. Secretary, for your time today.
Thanks so much for having me. You got it. And NATO is being tested.
And hopefully the strength is there for them to prevail when we come back to talk about those hotspots in general. It's time to take the quiz. Five questions, five minutes a day, five days a week. Take the quiz every weekday at the quiz.fox. And then listen to the quiz podcast to find out how you did play, share, and of course, listen to the quiz at the quiz.fox. Listen to the show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
