NATO Secretary General Proposes Increased Defense Spending Target
It will not make any difference unless the alliance reforms its rules
The NATO’s annual leader summit will meet between June 24 and 26, 2025, in The Hague, where the 32 NATO national leaders will gather along with the Indo-Pacific Four leaders, which consist of Japan, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand, as well as the President of the European Commission, and it is expected that President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also attend. The summit is the first leader meeting for Secretary General Mark Rutte as the political leader of NATO (he attended past leader meetings as Dutch prime minister) and the first leader meeting for President Trump of his second term. The summit will be the focal point of a media frenzy from media companies and political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic, as all the antics and handwringing from February 2025 will be revisited, along with the tariff negotiations spilling over from opposition media and politicians to muddy the waters by adding trade disputes to the defense meeting. The primary goal being shaped from this meeting from Secretary Rutte and President Trump’s point of view is increased defense spending requirements for NATO members.
The requirement of spending targets has been part of NATO policy since 2014, where all member countries agreed to spend 2% of their national GDP on defense. Meeting this 2% spending target was also a requirement for all new nations when they joined NATO. NATO adopted this spending target in response to Russia's seizure of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014. Since the adoption of this target, which to emphasize all countries agreed upon, has only been met every year by only three countries (Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States). This was a point of contention with President Trump in his first term at multiple NATO leaders' meetings, but despite the push by the President, the NATO countries were unwilling to meet their obligations.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and started the current war, only 7 of 30 countries (Sweden and Finland were not NATO members yet) met their commitments despite the Russian invasion. The prior NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, was finally able to mildly press and sometimes cajole more countries to commit to the target by 2024 during his last NATO leaders’ meeting in Washington DC. He was able to convince 22 of 32 to meet their spending requirements in 2024 as NATO defense commitments had increased by $150 billion between 2022 and 2024 to a record of almost $1.2 trillion in annual NATO defense spending.
Despite this apparent success, nearly a third of the alliance was still not adhering to the agreed-upon spending. Bluntly, they were not meeting their agreed-upon obligation. This point was delivered with a sledgehammer during the 2024 presidential campaign in the U.S. and was the start of accusations by many leaders in the West that the U.S. was going to leave NATO or not honor Article V commitments for members not meeting their commitments.
Mark Rutte was elected to the position of NATO Secretary General in October 2024 because he had the reputation as a politician that could work with a potential second term of Donald Trump and serve as someone that can smooth the differences between NATO allies, many of whom had barely hidden or open disdain for President Trump, and a potential new Trump administration. This is something that Mr. Rutte had done as the Dutch Prime Minister at NATO meetings where they were both national leaders in attendance, and he was able to mediate between the U.S. President and supercilious allies who looked down upon someone calling out their failed obligations.
This is not to say that Secretary Rutte is a supporter of President Trump, and that is clear from statements made by Mr. Rutte after the first Trump administration; he appears to have the ability to not get caught up in the rhetoric and is able to find common ground. This skill is becoming increasingly evident in the second Trump administration, as he has had multiple meetings with President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and Secretary Hegseth.
The common ground between President Trump and Secretary Rutte is the need for increased defense spending. Prior to President Trump's re-election, Secretary Rutte ran on a platform advocating for NATO members to increase their defense spending and fulfill their 2% GDP obligation. This approach aligned with then-candidate Trump’s position that Europe needed to spend more on defense. Secretary Rutte’s push did become difficult when President Trump stated that NATO targets needed to be increased from 2% of GDP to 5% of GDP, which seemed to make the convincing countries that largely ignored the 2% target scoff at the U.S.’s new public position.
The 5% target is not expected to be implemented immediately but was considered a ramp-up. The argument from the U.S. side was that so many countries in NATO ignored the defense spending for so long, even before the 2% requirement, that they needed the 5% increase in defense spending to catch up to where they should have been if they had spent 2% of GDP since 2014 and to restock their arms stockpiles of weapons and munitions that they sent to Ukraine in its war.
The general consensus of the U.S. proposal was that NATO defense spending needed to be around 3.5% to support a military infrastructure that could serve as a deterrent force in Europe (especially as the U.S. would need to focus on the Chinese threat in the western Pacific) and the additional 1.5% to restock and make up for decades of post-Cold War defense spending atrophy. Furthermore, any aid to Ukraine would need to be outside of the NATO defense budget. This was the policy position as set forth by the U.S. and, coincidentally, was close to an estimate by current (as of May 3, 2025) German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the long-term defense catch-up needs for Germany made in late 2023 and 2024. So, despite it being portrayed in Europe and the media as an unreasonable target and another Trump attack on NATO, it has already been floated by European leaders even prior to the 2024 U.S. election.
Secretary Rutte would have the difficult position of convincing skeptical NATO leaders to increase their spending to these levels, who would be even more resistant knowing it was publicly coming from a U.S. administration they basically despise. Despite the acrimony emanating from both sides of the Atlantic, the U.S. point was irrefutable. NATO countries disregarded the agreed-upon target, leading to a lack of a sufficient European deterrent. Consequently, they have struggled to provide Ukraine with the necessary arms to fight Russia, despite Western assurances to the contrary. Much of this was publicly stated by President Trump in his first administration and largely played out as he predicted (including being too reliant on Russia for energy).
The second Trump administration is much more emboldened and direct in its demands that NATO meet its commitments and more. Secretary Rutte has agreed that Europe needs to spend more, but he must largely support the new U.S. targets because he knows that it is in the best interest of the alliance to keep the U.S. involved in European affairs while admitting that the U.S. has commitments outside of Europe that must be met. Mr. Rutte is in a position where he must create a plan, secure European “buy-in,” and meet the key U.S. demand. This week, Secretary Rutte, ahead of the Hague summit, has floated an idea to meet the 5% GDP target needed and allow some flexibility for NATO members.
The proposal that Secretary Rutte is proposing is that NATO countries increase their defense spending to 3.5% of GDP and 1.5% of GDP on broader security-related spending. This related spending could be for infrastructure improvements such as roads and bridges to support heavy military vehicles or facilitate the movement of military assets across NATO countries to their frontiers as needed. It can be assumed that such funding would include improvements to underwater infrastructure and cybersecurity to protect assets that have dual uses within both the military and civil spheres, and the proposal can include spending to create defense production facilities. This would allow NATO country leaders to convince skeptical national politicians of spending more on defense, especially at the demands of the U.S., to increase their spending on dual-use projects that could serve both defense and civil infrastructure, which could be more palatable to politicians and the electorate.
The proposal has merits, and Secretary Rutte should be credited with forming such an idea. It is unclear if NATO leaders will agree to it, but it addresses many of the concerns about the need for increased spending and gives flexibility that is not part of the current NATO requirements. The issue, just as it is with the current 2% GDP target, is the mechanism for ensuring compliance and the steps to be taken against countries that fail to meet that goal. This issue has not been answered yet, and if nearly 1/3 of NATO countries cannot meet the 2% commitment even with the largest European land war since World War II continuing, will they commit to 3.5% or 5% in a war that could end in 2025?
There is no mechanism currently for failed compliance, and there is no mechanism for expelling countries from the alliance. President Trump has threatened and sent the European leaders and western press into a frenzy, by suggesting that withholding Article V for non-compliance could be used as leverage to ensure compliance. The unfortunate truth for NATO is that according to the current rules of NATO, President Trump believes this is the only viable solution for maintaining the alliance's integrity.
The issue with an alliance that is built on collective defense is that withholding Article V cannot be a long-term solution for non-compliance because the entire basis for collective defense is compromised, which is the core strength of NATO. A NATO Secretary General crisscrossing Europe and the Atlantic trying to convince NATO leaders to comply also cannot be the solution.
Before agreeing on any new targets, all nations need to answer the core question: Is NATO in its current form worth saving? If not, there's no point in suggesting or accepting new goals, no matter how creative they are. There is no real point in the alliance going forward, and maybe a new alliance needs to be formed (considering the disparity in size between Russia and European nations; some form of defense would need to be created by European countries, especially in the east).
If it is worth saving, then a real mechanism for compliance needs to be created, and enforceable steps for non-compliance need to be adapted. This would require countries to give up some sovereignty to a multinational organization, as evidenced by the European Union's existing framework. This might be more acceptable to many European NATO countries who are already in the European Union but would not be acceptable to all NATO members to including the U.S. and Canada.
The plain fact is that new spending expectations under the status quo arrangement are largely a farcical endeavor. A compliance structure needs to be created before any new commitments are agreed upon, but an enforceable compliance structure means member states giving up some national sovereignty. This will be politically unpopular in many member countries especially the U.S.
Is the only solution for the impasse for non-compliance ejection from NATO? This would mean that political destabilization can be used to change national defense policy leading to ejection from NATO which would be a vulnerability that an adversary like Russia could use. Or does the U.S. need to drawback its NATO commitments and force Europe to defend itself and not rely on U.S. defense largesse to defend the Continent?
Europe has proved that it is unwilling to meet its defense commitments even when it agrees to do so and a large land war in its third year is still not enough reason for those countries. As a result, a new NATO defense goal means nothing without compliance and meaningful compliance solutions will never be adopted (since unanimous consent of member states is required).
NATO’s original founding with 12 countries had a committed focus due to commonality and an existential Soviet threat. A present-day NATO with no organization wide existential threat and 32 nations that have little in common with each other (much less than what they consider a threat) is a politically weak structure that will never voluntarily meet any requirement. Maybe it is time for a new collective defense organization to replace NATO or supplement it with another defense organization.
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References:
https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/exclusivenato-chief-rutte-floats-twotier-spending-plan-to-meet-trump-target-4020274
https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pdf/240617-def-exp-2024-en.pdf