“A top uniformed NATO official warned Friday the European Union army concept endorsed by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel would be ‘duplicative’ and ‘unwise.’ U.S. President Donald Trump called Macron’s comments ‘very insulting’ in a spate of Twitter posts as the two held a meeting last week in Paris. Trump himself has tested the strained bonds with some of America’s closest allies by pressuring NATO allies to rely less on the U.S. and dedicate a greater percentage of their gross domestic products to defense. On Tuesday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg alluded the proposal of a European force at a NATO conference in Berlin, saying he welcomed, ‘increased EU efforts on defense, because I think that can actually help to strengthen NATO.’ European allied militaries can act without the U.S. so long as they use NATO command structures, Stoltenberg said. ‘It will be not a wise decision by all those nations who are members of both NATO and the European Union to start to have two sets of command structures, or duplicate what NATO is doing,’ Stoltenberg said.”
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