His return to the White House has created turmoil in transatlantic relations, with one of the most important “thorns” in cooperation with their allies being the question of the money paid by member states for their defense spending.
Already from his first period in the White House (2017-2021), setting a minimum limit of 4% of the budget for each member state. Indeed, during an extraordinary meeting of NATO, in 2018 in Brussels, the US president had even threatened to withdraw his country from the alliance in case his demand was not accepted. Of course, this did not happen, but the issue is back on the discussion table after his re-election.
Trump: “The US protects the members of the Alliance but not the other way around”
In particular, the US president said last Thursday that, telling reporters that the US protects the members of the Alliance, but not the other way around.
Earlier, he had demanded that the remaining members of the Alliance increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP – a huge increase compared to the current target of 2% and a figure that no NATO country, including the US, has reaches so far.
“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we certainly should be helping them,” Trump told reporters after signing the executive order at the White House. “We protect them. They don’t protect us”, he emphasized emphatically.
“They should go up from 2% to 5% (of GDP),” he added, referring to the amount of defense spending by each NATO member country, repeating what he had said via video link at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
G.G. NATO: Trump is “right” about Europe’s defense spending
For his part, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, despite being Prime Minister of the Netherlands from 2010 to 2024, had not particularly increased his country’s defense spending.
“He is of course right in saying that the problem is not the US and the problem is Europe,” Rutte said characteristically in a discussion on Ukraine at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The discussion also included staunch Trump supporter Richard Grenell, who has been tapped to be the White House’s new special envoy.
Grenell even criticized Dutch defense spending in front of Rutte. It is recalled that under Prime Minister Rutte, the Netherlands often failed to “catch” NATO’s defense spending target, which currently stands at 2% of GDP.
According to Grenell, NATO should not accept Ukraine into the military alliance unless its members begin to “catch up” on defense spending targets. “We have the NATO secretary general here talking about Ukraine’s accession,” he said.
“It is the American people who pay for defense. You can’t ask the American people to extend the NATO umbrella when current members aren’t paying their fair share, and that includes Dutch spending that needs to go up,” he added.
The reaction of European leaders
European leaders, however, do not seem willing to meet Trump’s demands. Already the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, appeared categorically opposed to the increase in defense spending. “I think it’s better to focus on what NATO has agreed on for a long time,” Soltz told Focus online.
According to the calculations of the German chancellor, if the target proposed by Trump were accepted, this would mean that the defense expenditure of his country would annually reach 200 billion. euro. “The budget of the German federal state for 2025 is approximately 490 billion. euro. We can’t give that much money,” Soltz added.
At the same time, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornou stressed that the increase in spending should not be limited to military purposes, but should address broader security problems such as cyber-attacks and terrorism.
“The situation is worse than during the Cold War,” warned Lecornou, referring specifically to the propaganda that is being spread over the Internet, with the most important case being that concerning the war in Ukraine. “You can see that we are in a world where we can be defeated without being invaded. And that means that the responsibility for the defense of our countries will go far beyond military issues alone,” he added.
