Defense Secretary Mattis arrives in Zagreb, Croatia. Photo: Paul McLeary

ZAGREB, CROATIA: Defense Secretary James Mattis reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to NATO on Thursday, just hours after President Donald Trump upended the annual NATO summit by again demanding allies increase their defense budgets.

After a tense morning in Brussels which saw the 29 member nations call an emergency session and cancel planned meetings on Ukraine and Georgia so Trump could hold an impromptu press conference, Mattis said the the United States remains “100 percent committed to NATO.”

Speaking with reporters traveling with him to Zagreb, Croatia, hours after the president spoke, Mattis said the alliance “is stronger today than it was yesterday. It is stronger today than it was a month ago, it is stronger today than it was a year ago.”

After reports that Trump had threatened to leave NATO unless allies began spending more on defense by 2019, Trump took the podium and claimed credit for increased defense spending in Europe.

SOURCE: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (https://www.sipri.org/)

“Everyone’s agreed to substantially up their commitment,” he said. “They’re going to up it at levels that they’ve never thought of before. Prior to last year where I attended my first meeting, it was going down, the amount of money being spent by countries was going down and down very substantially, and now it’s going up very substantially.”

NATO allies had spent years cutting defense budgets, only to quickly reverse course after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. Trump took office in January, 2017, several years into the reversal.

But instead of issuing an ultimatum, Trump backed up the alliance. “I believe in NATO. I think NATO’s a very important — probably the greatest ever done. But the United States was paying for anywhere from 70 to 90 percent of it, depending on the way you calculate. That’s not fair to the United States.”

President Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis

Mattis echoed the sentiment, telling reporters that “there is a much more purposeful atmosphere at NATO” and “we’re in very strong shape coming out of” the meetings, “and I think that right now we roll up our sleeves and we get to work on all the other initiatives we have underway which are going forward from the Baltics to the Mediterranean.”

SOURCE: World Bank (GDP) and CSIS (% of GDP spent on defense)

On Wednesday, President Trump stunned allies when he announced he wanted them to blow past the NATO goal of each member spending 2 percent on their GDP on defense by 2024, upping his demand to four percent.

But the United States is on track to spend 3.4 percent of GDP on defense in 2019, a percentage that will slowly decrease to about 3 percent, according to two U.S. government estimates, by 2023.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in its latest 5-year estimate, predicts a defense budget of 3 percent of GDP by that year, while the Congressional Budget Office forecasts 3.1 percent.

In a statement, Sen. John McCain called Trump’s words “disappointing, yet ultimately unsurprising. There is little use in parsing the president’s misstatements and bluster, except to say that they are the words of one man. Americans, and their Congress, still believe in the transatlantic alliance and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it is clear that our allies still believe in us as well.”

Mattis is in Croatia to attend the Adriatic Charter Ministerial Meeting. The group was formed in 2003 by Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and United States to help countries in the Balkans in their attempts to join NATO. In 2008, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina were invited to join the Charter, while Albania and Croatia became the first of the group to join NATO. In June 2017, Montenegro joined NATO, and the alliance announced Wednesday that it had kicked off talks with Macedonia to join NATO.