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NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana voiced his confidence on Monday in an online briefing with Romanian journalists in Brussels that the Alliance will be able to work with either of the two US administrations following the results of the November 3 elections and that the US relationship with Europe through NATO will continue to be an important anchor of US foreign policy.
Asked how "heated" things are within NATO in the perspective of the American presidential elections, especially in the context of tensions with Washington, especially due to the United States' insistence on increasing the defense budgets of the member states to 2% of GDP, Mircea Geoana answered that "obviously, the absolutely sovereign, democratic decision is up to the American people."
NATO's Deputy Secretary-General has stressed that the United States has been a key ally for 71 years.
"There have been times in the history of our Alliance when administrations have changed or the same administration continued, there have been times when the transatlantic conversation has had different tones, there's nothing new. That's why we have full confidence that the US relationship with Europe through NATO will continue to be an important anchor of American foreign policy," Geoana said.
And the reasons for such a privileged relationship are China's rise, Russia's increasingly aggressive game "not only in the Black Sea area, but also globally, militarily, in terms of security," but also the challenges in relation to the new technologies.
"The United States needs Europe, just as Europe needs the United States. I would say even more. Europe and the United States, we need all the democratic countries globally to be able to face unprecedented challenges in recent decades and maybe in recent centuries, when it comes to the rise of China," said Geoana.
"That is why we are confident that regardless of the result of November 3 - there may be a small gap until the winner is known due to the voting by mail - we will be able to work with either of the two administrations and continue to invest in a transatlantic relationship which is indispensable for the present and future of Europe and for the present and future of America as a global power," he said.
Geoana, on the other hand, considered that the legitimate interest of the US "to see more and more European allies investing in defense and sharing this burden of military spending is something that was also bluntly said by the (Barack) Obama administration, during which Mr. Joe Biden was the vice president."
The senior NATO official stressed that since 2014 there has been a steady increase in defense budgets from European allies and Canada.
"Right now we have noticed that if we look at the aggregate figures, 130 billion US dollars are additionally being invested in defense. So we believe that the interest and the convincing way in which the US encourages us to play a greater role in the security zone will continue," Geoana also said.
