Europeans must take charge of their collective defense, because the era in which the United States saw our protection as a priority has long been over. Indeed, with Donald Trump in power that era has definitely dead and buried. This is, in essence, the message sent by the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte.
“The US includes that their security depends on peace in the Eurotlantic and Arctic area. But they cannot think only of Europe and the Atlantic. Today they guarantee 44 percent of conventional military capacity in Europe but will have to be 30 percent in 2032, with the European allies who will have to go up to 70 in order to allow the United States to focus more on the Indo-Pacific”, said the former Dutch premier to the parliamentary assembly. of NATO, in the USA.
The new target
This means that all members of the Atlantic alliance will have to quickly increase their expenses for the defense, which is also the goal of 2 percent of GDP is now only a memory of the past, and now that target must be more than doubled. The Secretary General said he was expecting that the members of the alliance will agree on a spending goal of 5 percent of GDP in the top to be held on 24 and 25 June at the AIA, his hometown.
“I assume that we will agree on a high defense expenditure, equal to 5 percent equal,” said Rutte during the meeting of the parliamentary assembly in Dayton, even if he has not yet specified what “the individual distribution” will be, but providing that “will be considerably higher than 3 percent as regards hard expenditure”, that is, the armaments, and then there will also be “a goal for the expense linked to defense”. Large, such as borders protection, infrastructures, military mobility and cybersecurity.
Different visions
The composition could be 3.5 and 1.5, but among the partners the debate on the point is still in progress. The Italian Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani, in announcing the achievement of our 2 % lens of the goal, had said that he considered 3 and 2 a more plausible goal.
Italy reaches 2% of defense expenditure, but NATO is not enough
In any case, the members of the alliance now seem willing to give in to the pressure of Trump who asked for a 5 percent goal. Because the current one, argued Rutte, “is a critical moment for our security”, as a show “The brutal war of Russia against Ukraine”, with Moscow who “made a team with China, North Korea and Iran and are preparing for long -term opposition”.
Not easy goal
But reaching the 5 percent goal will not be simple. According to the calculations of the European Commissioner to Defense Andrius Kubilius, every percentage point of more GDP represents about 200 billion euros for the entire European Union, of which 23 countries out of 27 are also NATO members. A mammoth, which makes the scope of the challenge evident.
And even if next month the leaders then agree on the lens, then reaching it will be a whole other story. It was in 2014, at the summit of Newport, that a first goal was established: 2 percent of GDP in military expenses by 2024. At the end of last year, only 22 countries NATO NATO NATO had reached this goal, with Italy that came to us only now and is already asking for time to go further.
France has promised 3.5 “in the coming years” and also considers the “extended” expenditure objective of 1.5, while Germany, for its part, said it was ready for the mega increase, and indeed has promised to build the most powerful army in Europe.
Beyond the proclamations, at the moment to lead the ranking of the NATO member countries that spend more Poland, already at 4.7 percent, with the declared goal of reaching 5 in 2026, as well as the Baltic countries. On the bottom of the ranking, Belgium, Spain and Slovenia remain, still below the 2 percent threshold, albeit with promises of adjustment within the year.
