NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, left, bangs a gavel to signify the start of a meeting of NATO defence ministers at the organization's headquarters in Brussels on Thursday.Virginia Mayo/The Associated Press
Most U.S. allies at NATO endorse President Donald Trump’s demand that they invest 5 per cent of gross domestic product on their defence needs and are ready to ramp up security spending even more, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Thursday.
“There’s broad support,” Rutte told reporters after chairing a meeting of NATO defence ministers at the alliance’s Brussels headquarters. “We are really close,” he said, and added that he has “total confidence that we will get there” by the next NATO summit in three weeks.
European allies and Canada have already been investing heavily in their armed forces, as well as on weapons and ammunition, since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
At the same time, some have balked at U.S. demands to invest 5 per cent of GDP on defence – 3.5 per cent on core military spending and 1.5 per cent on the roads, bridges, airfields and sea ports needed to deploy armies more quickly.
In 2023, as Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine entered its second year, NATO leaders agreed to spend at least 2% of GDP on national defence budgets. So far, 22 of the 32 member countries have done so, and others still struggle to do so.
Trump and his NATO counterparts appear likely to endorse the new goal at a summit in The Hague on June 24-25. Trump insists that U.S. allies should spend at least 5 per cent so America can focus on security priorities elsewhere, mostly in the Indo-Pacific and its own borders.
He has gained important leverage over the other NATO countries by casting doubt over whether the United States would defend allies that spend too little. At the same time, Trump has imposed tariffs on ally and foe alike, citing U.S. security concerns.
The new goal would involve a 1.5-per-cent increase over the current 2-per-cent goal for defence budgets. It means that all 32 countries would be investing the same percentage.
The United States spends by far more than any other ally in dollar terms.
But according to NATO’s most recent figures, it was estimated to have spent 3.19 per cent of GDP in 2024, down from 3.68 per cent a decade ago. It’s the only ally whose spending has dropped since 2014.
While the two new figures do add up to 5 per cent, factoring in improvements to civilian infrastructure so that armies can deploy more quickly significantly changes the basis on which NATO traditionally calculates defence spending.
The seven-year time frame is also short by the alliance’s usual standards. The far more modest 2% target – set after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 – was meant to be reached over a decade.
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According to U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump has done nothing less than save NATO.
He told reporters that European allies around the table on Thursday had said: “We hear you. We all need increased capabilities. We all need to spend more. Thank you, President Trump, for reviving this alliance. It was an alliance that was sleepwalking to irrelevance.”
The extra spending will also be needed should the Trump administration announce a force draw down in Europe, where around 84,000 U.S. troops are based, leaving European allies to plug any security gaps.
Asked what the Pentagon’s plans are, Hegseth did not explain but he said: “It would only be responsible for the United States to continually assess our force posture, which is precisely what we’ve done.”
“America can’t be everywhere all the time, nor should we be, and so there are reasons why we have troops in certain places,” he said, offering the assurance that any review would be done “alongside our allies and partners to make sure it’s the right size.”
During the meeting, Hegseth and his defence counterparts also approved purchasing targets for stocking up on weapons and military equipment to better defend Europe, the Arctic and the North Atlantic, as part of the U.S. push to ramp up security spending.
The “capability targets” lay out goals for each of the 32 nations to purchase priority equipment like air defence systems, long-range missiles, artillery, ammunition, drones and “strategic enablers” such as air-to-air refuelling, heavy air transport and logistics. Each nation’s plan is classified, so details are scarce.