NATO Sec. General Jens Stoltenberg Reflects on 10 Years Leading NATO | Amanpour and Company

Secretary General welcome thank you so much for having me it's the end of an era 10 years perhaps the longest ever Secretary General of NATO I want to ask you first what stands out as the biggest successes for you the biggest achievement not only for me but for NATO has been that we have been able to reinforce NATO's Collective defense make NATO stronger the world has become much more dangerous over these 10 years but NATO is much stronger more def spending High redness and for the first time in our history combat troops in East B Alliance these are Big achievements and bigger yeah and of course also bigger four new members um North Macedonia Montenegro and now uh Sweden and Finland that has of course made also NATO stronger what would you say are the biggest disappointments failures catastrophes the fullscale invasion of Ukraine uh it started in 2014 with the annexation of Kia but then the full scale invasion in 2022 uh and then of course uh what happened uh the withdrawal from Afghanistan uh that was and remains painful well I wasn't expecting you to say that tell me why Afghanistan uh that that was pain that is and was painful because we tried something that we didn't achieve uh we tried to build a democratic free Afghanistan with equal rights for men and women uh we realized after some years that that was too ambitious that was something that required too much uh so I think one of the lessons learned from Afghanistan is the danger of mission creep we started in 2001 that was right to go in and to fight Al-Qaeda uh to take uham Bin Laden uh so what started as a focused counterterrorism operation uh moved uh uh into a big ambitious nation building Mission and and that mission grp was too much because the reality was that we didn't have the resources the will to do that for decades and yes yet it was more than 20 years there was like trillions of dollar spend lots of people uh and now we can safely say that it's gone 360 back to Taliban 1.0 I mean that is a catastrophe in fact yeah extremely bad and the catastrophe not least for the people of Afghanistan in particular women and I I met many women uh members of parliament journalists who begged us to stay and for many years I promised that we will stay we were going to live on a condition spased approach uh so we were only going to leave when we had the confidence that the African government was able to take over and and and and secure the country but after 20 years and after paying a high price in in in Blood and treasure pressure uh we realized NATO allies realized the United States realized that we could not continue this and therefore we made the decision to leave Afghanistan I believe that was the right decision uh but but but I believe that we should have in a way understood it earlier and and and and stayed on the first mission fighting terrorism that's a focused Mission and we achieved a lot we degraded Al-Qaeda we prevented Afghanistan from being a safe haven for international terrorist and we actually gave million of uh girls education and that's a lasting achievement except it's not because they've all now had that uh education taken away from them th those of of high school age women have been completely removed from the workplace the latest edict is they can't even be heard in public but it brings me to president Trump because let's face it the deal the deal to pull out of Afghanistan was literally just surrender essentially handed over to the Taliban there was no discussion with the Afghan government no discussion with Afghan women and so I I want to ask you then you had to deal with President Trump who appeared to be very anti-nato very anti- the alliance very transactional do we know whether he had ever agreed to Article 5 what did you learn from how you dealt with him then and what happens if he's elected again for NATO I focused on the issues uh of course uh I'm a Nordic Norwegian Social Democrat and and there are many differences between a Conservative Republican from the United States and me but but on on on climate and on abortion or taxes but as Secretary General of NATO I focused on the issue of NATO security and on those issues it was possible to have a working relationship with the Trump Administration because the main message from the Trump Administration as actually from the Obama Administration and now the Biden Administration was that European allies had to spend more it was President Obama and and Vice President Biden that actually pushed allies to agree uh to spend more in defense at the NATO Summit in 2014 which was your first year yes and then since 2014 allies European allies and Canada have really stepped up we have to remember that in 2014 only three allies met the guideline of spending 2% of GDP on defense this year 23 allies will spend 2% or more so that's a huge difference and that was my message to president Trump let's focus on the issues and and and that actually helped [Music] [Music]