NATO braces for Trump shock

Brussels:NATO promised on Wednesday to defend all allies despite election victor Donald Trump's call to set conditions for US help, as the alliance braced for a more impulsive leader some fear could withdraw funding to deter Russia.

During the presidential election campaign Trump threatened to abandon US allies in Europe if they do not spend enough on defence, comments that were particularly unnerving for the ex-Soviet Baltic states on Russia's border which fear Moscow might try a repeat of its 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO's promise to defend any ally under attack was an unconditional guarantee set out in the Western alliance's founding treaty in 1949.

All allies have made a solemn commitment to defend each other and this is something which is absolute and unconditioned," Stoltenberg told a news conference, saying he would try to speak to Trump by telephone as soon as possible and would welcome him to a NATO summit in Brussels next year.

The US commitment to NATO and the collective defence of Europe has been rock solid for almost 70 years and I am absolutely confident that it will still be the case," Stoltenberg said, noting that two world wars had shown the importance of stability in Europe to the United States.

Trump's suggestion of making the United States' defence of its Western allies conditional was the first time a leading presidential candidate had raised the idea, putting him directly at odds with NATO's 27 other member-states.

Diplomats questioned how long NATO's chief would be able to maintain a "business as usual" tone with a new US leader who has expressed admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin, condemned by the West for his actions in Ukraine.

The idea that Trump's presidency is not going to create problems for NATO is delusional," said Dana Allin, a US foreign policy expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was founded around the central promise that an armed attack against one ally is an attack against all, whether it be on land, in the air or on the seas.

In one demonstration that not all US Republicans share Trump's scepticism about NATO, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Wednesday he believes the NATO alliance "is every bit as important today as it ever was.

After the fall of the Soviet Union a quarter of a century ago, NATO's European allies cut defence spending to historic lows, leaving the United States to make up around three quarters of the alliance's military expenditure.

A newly assertive Russia under Putin has begun to change that and Europe is again spending more on defence. But Britain, Poland, Greece and Estonia are the only European nations to meet a NATO goal of spending at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. Germany, Europe's biggest economy, spends far less than 2 per cent of its GDP on defence.

A first sign of Trump's tough stance could come as early as next year, when the United States is due to deploy troops and heavy combat equipment to eastern Europe under a $3.4 billion U.S. spending plan for Europe to deter Russia.

Trump could scale back President Barack Obama's plan to quadruple funding under the European Reassurance Initiative (ERR) from just under $800 million - a significant investment in Europe after decades of cutting its presence in Europe.

Trump has also threatened to withdraw U.S. forces from Europe if allies fail to pay more for US protection. Trump has said NATO could become obsolete if it does not focus more on Islamist militant groups hostile to the West, an area that is not traditionally a core focus of the alliance.