OREANDA-NEWS. Secretary of State of the United States of America Mike Pompeo said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is at risk of becoming “obsolete”. According to the diplomat, the alliance needs to change in order to meet the challenges of present time, and member countries must make enough contributions to the budget of the military bloc.

Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron, in an interview with The Economist magazine, said that NATO has completely lost coordination within itself. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said they did not share this opinion. Macron’s words were also commented by Russian President’s Spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “Whether NATO is alive or dead and what parts of this alliance are in a coma, it is not for us to decide, we are not pathologists,” he said.

Speaking at a forum in German capital dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Pompeo recalled that NATO is 70 years old. According to him, the alliance “needs to grow and change.” “It needs to confront the realities of today and the challenges of today,” Pompeo said. At the same time, the Secretary of State declared that he don’t think that the transatlantic partnership will ever become obsolete, but it faces such a threat.

Pompeo resumed that “if nations believe that they can get the security benefit without providing NATO the resources that it needs, if they don’t live up to their commitments, there is a risk that NATO could become ineffective or obsolete.” According to the politician, the members of the alliance should keep these facts in mind and should not take things as they are.