Norway’s Stoltenberg Says NATO Is Now More Difficult to Manage

Jens Stoltenberg in Oslo
Photo: Bloomberg

Jens Stoltenberg said the tensions between the US and its European NATO allies are “more difficult to manage” now compared to when he left the alliance in 2024.

“I’m not more optimistic now than two years ago, if anything it has moved in even worse direction,” Stoltenberg said in a Bloomberg Newsmakers interview in Oslo. “I still believe that the task is to try to keep North America and Europe together but there are limits for what we should accept.” He said it was “unacceptable” for the US to threaten Denmark, referring to President Donald Trump’s ambition to take Greenland.

Stoltenberg, who has served twice as prime minister of Norway, led the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as its secretary general in 2014 to 2024, with his term extended several times. Europe’s security landscape shifted during his time at the helm. Since 2022, Stoltenberg managed NATO’s biggest military buildup since the Cold War and managed to persuade member states to admit Finland and Sweden into the alliance.

Since the outbreak of the US war on Iran in February, President Donald Trump has criticized the allies for not backing the US and efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. European leaders, who were not consulted by Trump before he started the conflict, have largely resisted supporting an offensive war. That’s prompted Trump to call the defense bloc a “paper tiger,” questioning its relevance and allies’ willingness to shoulder the cost of collective security.

“We don't have any guarantees that NATO will continue forever. So we need to recommit, it's like a marriage in a way,” Stoltenberg said. “We need to recommit again and again. And so we have some bad times and some good times. NATO will continue for several reasons. One is that, of course, NATO is good for Europe, so Europe becomes safer with NATO. But I also strongly believe that a strong NATO is good for the US.”

In recent weeks, Trump has also rattled Europe with sudden and contradictory pronouncements on troop withdrawals. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered more scathing remarks at European allies at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense forum in Singapore over the weekend.

“I feel that there continues to be strong support for NATO in general in the United States, despite the fact that the US President has been very critical,” Stoltenberg said. “ Then I think we need to take into account what he actually says. The main criticism from President Trump against NATO has not been against NATO, but has been against NATO allies not investing enough in NATO. That has changed, that is changing.”

At a landmark NATO summit last year, all allies except for Spain pledged to spend 3.5% of gross domestic product on hard defense, and an additional 1.5% in related security areas. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, a top NATO military official, said that Europe has responded to Trump’s demands to pay more for defense, and that the relationship with the Pentagon is stable and free from “drama.”

Denmark and Greenland in January entered talks with the US over Arctic security and Washington’s role in its future, and those talks are continuing. Trump’s repeated calls to take over the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland have sparked concern among the island’s 56,000 residents as well as in Denmark, which has been a close ally of the US since World War II.

While NATO’s European allies are “more prepared than we have been for decades,” Stoltenberg said Europe isn’t “mentally prepared” for a large-scale war and “that's a bit dangerous because we have seen that war is possible also in our close neighborhood.”

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