Stoltenberg: America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was NATO’s biggest failure

According to RCO News Agency, Jens Stoltenberg, the former Secretary General of NATO and the current Minister of Finance of Norway, called the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan the biggest failure of NATO.

Stoltenberg said in an interview with The Times: “This was NATO’s biggest failure.”

At the same time, he added that in the end he considers the decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan correct.

In early August 2021, the Taliban intensified their attacks against Afghan government forces, entering Kabul on August 15 and announcing the end of the war the next day. Ashraf Ghani, who was the president of Afghanistan at the time, left the country. On the night of August 31, the US military left Kabul airport, ending almost 20 years of US military presence in Afghanistan.

A number of politicians in the United States called the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan a shameful and panic-driven flight. The New York Times previously reported, citing the results of its research in the region, that the US efforts to form a pro-government militia group in northern Afghanistan have failed due to the recruitment of bandits and marginalized people in these organizations.

Stoltenberg’s fear of the collapse of NATO in the Trump era

The former Secretary General of NATO and the current Minister of Finance of Norway also stated that during his presidency of NATO, he was afraid of the collapse of the alliance amid the threats of the US President Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO.

“At the NATO summit in 2018, where President Trump actually said he was considering withdrawing from the alliance, I was concerned that I was going to be the secretary general overseeing the end of NATO,” Stoltenberg said in an interview with The Times.

According to Ria Novosti, as John Bolton, the former national security adviser of the White House, claimed in his book, Trump wanted to threaten the NATO leaders at the 2018 summit that the United States would withdraw from the alliance if they did not pay a share equal to 2% of the GDP.

According to Bolton, he then discussed Trump’s threat to withdraw from NATO with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and they decided to convince him to stay in the alliance, but possibly with a reduced US contribution. In the end, Trump did as Bolton advised him to do in his speech; He declared his support for NATO, but criticized those countries in the alliance that still had low military budgets.

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