ICYMI: Pelosi warns the US needs NATO too
Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi sat down with Politico Bureau Chief and Senior Political Columnist Jonathan Martin at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center to discuss the future of the United States' relationship with NATO at POLITICO’s Securing Europe: NATO's Next Steps Event.
“If we as the United States of America do not honor our commitments, I don’t know how we expect people to honor their commitments to us," Speaker Emerita Pelosi said.
Read coverage of the event below:
Politico: Pelosi warns the US needs NATO too
[Eric Bazail-Eimil, 5/7/25]
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday warned that the United States cannot afford to neglect its commitment to mutual defense to its NATO allies in the face of Russian provocations.
Speaking at a POLITICO event on the sidelines of the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington, the former House speaker acknowledged that President Donald Trump has spoken “frivolously” about the alliance in the past. Yet the San Francisco Democrat insisted that the U.S. has to support the alliance — and the commitment to mutual defense enshrined in its Article 5 — because the U.S. also needs to know it will have help in future crises.
“If we as the United States of America do not honor our commitments. I don’t know how we expect people to honor their commitments to us,” Pelosi said.
She noted that NATO countries came to the United States’ defense following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying, “They didn’t ask us how much we were giving to NATO or anything else. They just honored Article 5.” Those attacks were the only time that the alliance has invoked Article 5.
In reference to Canada, Pelosi blasted Trump’s comments about mutual defense for countries that haven’t met the alliance’s 2 percent of GDP defense spending target. “I don’t think that the president of the United States should say to a NATO country, if you haven’t paid 2 percent, I say to Russia, have at them,” she said.
Pelosi also said that “I don’t think the door has been shut on” repairing ties between the U.S. and NATO member states.
Yet she also needled the White House in more humorous ways, striking a more sardonic tone for other Trump administration moves toward the alliance. Dismissing the Trump administration’s efforts to potentially annex Greenland, Pelosi quipped that there are “more people [who] think that Elvis Presley is alive in the United States than Greenlanders who think they want to be part of the United States.”
She also voiced some measured praise for more conciliatory comments from Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday regarding the transatlantic alliance and peace in Ukraine. Vance had shocked allies in a February speech to the Munich Security Conference — which also organized Wednesday’s meeting — where he assailed Europe for encroaching on free speech and being lackluster partners to the United States.
When he spoke to the group Wednesday, Vance instead insisted both Europe and the United States are on the “same civilizational team.” He added, “It’s completely ridiculous to think that you’re ever going to be able to drive a firm wedge between the United States and Europe.”
“It was a better approach,” Pelosi said about Vance’s comments. “I would say it was well received.”