Pompeo calls on NATO to grow against 'threats' from Russia, China

US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has unleashed new attacks against two military powers, Russia and China, calling on the NATO military alliance to grow and confront "the challenges of today.”

Speaking on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the German capital, Berlin, Pompeo said the US and its allies need to "defend what was so hard-won... in 1989" and "recognize we are in a competition of values with un-free nations.”

He accused China of using “tactics and methods to suppress its own people that would be horrifyingly familiar to former East Germans.”

Pompeo also accused Russia of invading its neighbors and crushing dissent.

“Western, free nations have a responsibility to deter threats to our people" Pompeo said, adding, “We can never take ... things for granted.”

"Seventy years on... it needs to grow and change. It needs to confront the realities of today and the challenges of today,” he added.

He was apparently responding to French President, Emanuel Macron, who said recently that NATO was "brain dead."

The European Union’s incoming chief, Ursula von der Leyen, also accused Russia of "using violence to shift established borders in Europe, and is trying to fill every vacuum that the US has left behind."

SS