United States Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker said NATO allies must increase their defence spending as the Russia-Ukraine conflict continues.Geert Vanden Wijngaert/The Associated Press
The United States remains committed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, but its members including Canada must sharply increase their defence spending to bolster Europe’s security in order to “outpace Russia,” the American ambassador to NATO said.
Matthew Whitaker did not say whether U.S. President Donald Trump would abandon NATO – an alliance established after the Second World War that now includes 32 member countries – if military spending did not rise sharply, as he threatened to do during his first term.
“The United States is committed to NATO, full stop,” Mr. Whitaker told the media one day ahead of the NATO defence ministers’ meeting in Brussels.
He said the U.S. was also committed to Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members. But he was insistent that the member countries spend 5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defence. The current NATO threshold level is 2 per cent; a few big economies, among them Canada, Italy and Spain, are well under that level.
“Let me cut to the core of our message – 5 per cent,” Mr. Whitaker said.
“This is not just going to be a pledge. This is going to be a commitment. … As the Russia-Ukraine conflict grinds on, Moscow is already preparing for its next move. We are already seeing the Kremlin aim to rebuild its military. NATO allies must outpace Russia.”
Mr. Whitaker would not say when the member states would have to reach that level of spending.
“We are currently negotiating within the North Atlantic Council the timelines [and] what is included in the 5 per cent, both from a defence standpoint and also from defence-related and security-related spending,” he said. “But let me be clear on this, there is not unlimited time.”
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The U.S. wants the proposed spending benchmark to be enshrined at the June 24-25 NATO summit in The Hague. Before then, NATO countries will negotiate the timeline of the new target and whether support for Ukraine could be included in the 5-per-cent figure.
The 5-per-cent target has been informally endorsed by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. He has proposed a two-tier approach. Spending on “core” capabilities – weapons, infantry and other fighting equipment and forces – would require a 3.5-per-cent target. Another 1.5 percentage points would cover general security measures such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.
It is unclear how Canada and other allies will meet the 3.5-per-cent goal, let alone the 5-per-cent one. Canada’s defence spending was an estimated 1.37 per cent of GDP in 2024, according to NATO data. It was one of only eight of NATO’s 32 member countries whose spending was under the 2-per-cent threshold. The others were Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain. The biggest proportionate spenders were Poland, at 4.1 per cent; Estonia, at 3.4 per cent; and the U.S., at just under 3.4 per cent.
Canada’s defence spending has been rising in recent years, but not by enough to exceed 2 per cent any time soon. NATO says Canadian outlays were an estimated $41-billion in 2024, up from $32-billion in 2021, the year before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
During the election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney said his party would aim to hit NATO’s defence spending floor of 2 per cent of GDP by 2030. Speaking to reporters in Rome last month, after the inaugural mass of Pope Leo XIV, he declined to say that Canada would endorse the proposed 5-per-cent spending target, saying the government would spend whatever is necessary to guarantee the country’s security after having “intensive discussions” with allies on matters such as Arctic sovereignty.
At a Wednesday press conference ahead of the defence ministers’ meeting, Mr. Rutte said, “European allies and Canada have been stepping up. And I expect that most, if not all, allies will reach the initial aim of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence this year. … But we have to go further and we have to go faster.”
Extra military spending might be a hard sell for governments, since it could mean diverting financial resources from health, education and other programs. Britain is partly funding extra defence spending by gutting its foreign-aid presence. Its aid budget fell to 0.3 per cent of GDP this year from 0.5 per cent last year, after a previous cut from 0.7 per cent.