Trump Views On NATO: President Hopes Alliance Will Work In Fighting Against ISIS

From calling the NATO "obsolete" to tagging it "no longer obsolete," President Donald Trump took a 180-degree turn on NATO from during his campaigning last year. Trump said Wednesday, that it has shifted its focus on handling the threat of terror.

"The NATO Alliance has been the bulwark of international peace and security," Trump said from the East Room of the White House during a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg. "I said it was obsolete; it's no longer obsolete. It’s my hope that NATO will take on an increased role in supporting our Iraqi partners in their battle against ISIS."

Read: Trump Charges Merkel Billions For Money'Owed' To US For NATO Protection, White House Denies Report

While campaigning, Trump had complained that the 28 countries in the NATO alliance had agreed to contribute at least two percent of their GDP to NATO, have been failing to do so. According to reports, less than a quarter of those countries are making the contributions.

"NATO is obsolete," Trump had said last year. "It's extremely expensive to the United States, disproportionately so. And we should readjust NATO. And it's going to have to be either readjusted to take care of terrorism or we're going to have to set up a new -- a new coalition, a new group of countries to handle terrorism because terrorism is out of control," reports quoted Trump.

In March, 2016, during a meeting with the Washington Post editorial board, he had said: "NATO was set up at a different time. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. We’re not a rich country anymore. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money...NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO but we’re spending a lot of money. Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved.”

Throughout his campaigning, Trump had said the U.S. is paying more funds to NATO than many other rich countries and that the arrangement was unfair. He said: "If we cannot be properly reimbursed for the tremendous cost of our military protecting other countries, and in many cases the countries I’m talking about are extremely rich...we have many NATO members that aren’t paying their bills," according to CBS News.