President Donald Trump has secured a commitment to increase defense spending from European allies at this week’s NATO summit, held at The Hague in the Netherlands.
“Allies commit to invest 5% of [gross domestic product] annually on core defense requirements as well as defense- and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure our individual and collective obligations,” the 32-member nations of NATO said in a statement Wednesday.
Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO and a former prime minister of the Netherlands, attributed the promised increases in defense spending to Trump.
“For too long, one ally, the United States, carried too much of the burden of that commitment—and that changes today. President Trump—dear Donald—you made this change possible,” Rutte said at the conference.
Critics were quick to point out that the statement eschewed the word “all” before allies, and at least one member country, Spain, has already announced it would not meet the target. Still, the commitment is a significant victory for the president, given that he has long criticized the alliance countries for prioritizing generous social safety nets at the expense of defense spending while the U.S. foots the bill with its nearly $1 trillion annual defense budget.
Indeed, Trump in the past called NATO “obsolete” as a result of its failure to take “care of terror,” and has repeatedly criticized the alliance countries for failing to live up to their share of the bargain by committing more to defense spending.
The president reiterated the point yesterday on Tuesday of this week, saying, “There’s a problem with Spain. Spain is not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them, frankly.”
The president appeared hopeful going into the meeting with the other nations, writing beforehand on the platform Truth Social that “at worst, it [the conference] will be a much calmer period than what I just went through with Israel and Iran.”
NATO was created in 1949 as a counterbalance to Soviet aggression in Europe. Article 5 of the treaty stipulates that an attack against one or more of the NATO member states will be considered an attack against all of them. The article was invoked after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S.
After the Cold War ended, the alliance continued to be a countervailing force against the military of the newly created Russian Federation. The original defense pact signed in 1949 had just 12 countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the U.S., and the United Kingdom. In the succeeding decades, the alliance moved eastward, adding several other European countries to its ranks, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were once a part of the Soviet Union. A total of 32 nations now make up the alliance, with Finland and Sweden being the most recent nations to join. Finland joined the pact in 2023, and Sweden joined in 2024.
Trump also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin at the summit, saying that the Russian leader had “been misguided” and expressing his consternation that solving the war between Ukraine and Russia has not been accomplished yet.
“I’m very surprised, actually. I thought we would have had that settled,” Trump said.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Signal by Jacob Adams.
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
Great, except most nations never even met the 2%…and the US is currently behind on 3.5%. So, how many decades do we get to slide so that other NATO countries can catch up? Does anyone REALLY believe that if the US were attacked any NATO nations would come to our defense. Yeah, me neither.
What to say. NATO like the UN is an organization that talk, nothing more. Cost a lot of money, but is it needed today? Is it a power hungry group like the EU has become? They argue more amongst one another. And yet a war is still raging among nations outside of NATO. Would the war have been stopped sooner if Ukraine was part of NATO? I doubt it. Because America again would have been the one carrying the burden to stop it. Because we ended up paying the most, under Biden’s leadership, to the Ukraine and what has happened? Peace? No!!! Death and destruction. Just like Iran with its proxies did in the Middle East. Iran started the attack on Oct 7-2023 by killing 1200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Yet the world blames Israel for the death and destruction in Gaza. No Hamas with support from Iran destroyed Gaza by putting weapons in tunnels under hospitals and apartment buildings. Only the enemies within in our country make it Israel’s fault when many people die when they are defending themselves. Even today the Ayatollah Khamenie calls it a win over Israel and America. This man lied like the dem enemies lie. Anything and everything to destroy America. Rutte is two faced he stroked Trump so he wouldn’t withdraw America from NATO. All the countries have 10 years to get to 5% of their GDP payment. It all looks fantastic but so much can happen in today’s unsettled world. Even
president Trump had to admit he was stymied that Putin and Ukraine are still fighting. He looks at it as lives lost. He wants to stop that. Only those on the left are fighting for the money that is coming to them with this war. Don’t be fooled, war is hell, but for these billionaires a prosperous venture. Zelensky can’t account for any of the money Biden sent him. Why not?
war is money. Why would the dems, enemy of America, be so upset with our military successful mission over Iran. I haven’t heard one word of praise for our military and what they accomplished. President Trump is right because they hate Trump. They forget Trump did it to save America and Israel. Even that the dems won’t acknowledge because then the people will see that their ego and hate was greater than the welfare of the people.
I think its a step in the right direction, after all, no other president even brought up the subject except Kennedy, early in his tenure, nothing happened after that. We wait and see, I realize how much help we’d get from NATO, should the need arise, but face it, President Trump is on the job, folks, for our country, and I say great. Also the tariffs on incoming products, keep it up, we have been losing in this area for far too long.
Best solution would be for NATO to calculate the deficiency percentage of the agreed-upon goal each member falls short, and provide the same degree of military assistnce in case of a pointless aggression by a neighbor. Get what they pay for.
Let’s consider letting Europe defend itself. We can better spend this dollars on other activities. NATO needs to end and turn the responsibility of defending itself to Europe.
Victory
The solution to this problem is easy. Tell Sain and any other country that will not agree to pay their fair share that they will be removed from NATO security and let out in the cold to defend themselves.
Spain fought the Moors under El Cid-what hapened?
this is why free-riding globalist-communists hate him.
unamerican predecessors would not stand up for legal Americans paying their freight.
Oh, and by the way the subject of NATO nations increasing their NATO spending was first brought up over 30 years ago and to this day most NATO nations don’t contribute 2%.
So…….good luck on ever seeing that 5%. Those folks would rather have stuff like a happy citizenry that can do troublesome things like………eat and own a home.
George W Trump can take all the laps he wants but someone needs to tap him on his shoulder and remind him why the NATO nations agreed to this increase BY 2035
Where will Trump be in 2035? My bet is he will be in a fine nursing facility watching news from the NATO nations that never did increase their military spending budgets.
My goodness, not everyone is stupid are they?