A Norwegian Leopard tank takes part in a gunnery training competition in Latvia last year. Photo: NATO
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is a man on a mission – get Europe to spend more on defence. A great deal more.
And he believes the new hawkish US government is giving him the ammunition he needs to convince governments as the Russian war in Ukraine enters a fourth year.
His sentiments were laid out in public, again, late last week, when Rutte travelled to Slovakia to meet with President Peter Pellegrini and cabinet ministers, talked to NATO troops and spoke to university students in the capital, Bratislava.
He says Slovakia, like the other 31 countries of the alliance (which includes the US and Canada with their Atlantic coastlines), must spend more than its current 2 per cent of GDP on defence; he has previously flagged a defence-to GDP spending ratio of up to 7 per cent and says funding can be reallocated from welfare and pension programs.
He says that while the US wants NATO countries to spend more on defence, he also is keen to see those countries to spend even more and for more urgent reasons.
“Defence spending across the alliance is on an upward trajectory (up 20 per cent for Europe and Canada in 2024) but growing threats will require greater investment,” he says.
“We know that the 2014 target of 2 per cent (by 2025) will not keep us safe in the years ahead.
“Allies must invest more. NATO is strong but we need to be even stronger … we must have more resources, we must have more forces and we must have more capabilities.”
NATO boss Mark Rutte (left) with Slovakian President Peter Pellegrini. Photo: NATO
The NATO boss says the alliance is working on a revised defence-GDP spending ratio target of “considerably more than 3 per cent”.
“We are still finalising the work; it is clear that 2 per cent is not enough (and) that it will be much more. I think it will be considerably more than 3 per cent.”
“We also need to decide on a time, and … an ambitious time, to get to the new target.”
Rutte wasn’t shy about pointing out European laxity on defence spending in 2014 which changed when Donald Trump was elected “then, all of a sudden, the numbers went up”.
On concerns about a ‘two-speed’ Europe emerging as a result of the Russia-US peace talks, Rutte concedes he was “a bit irritated” at the recent Munich Security conference by some European nations who did not want to get involved directly or wanted a more passive role at the peace talks table.
“I said, ‘organise yourselves. Fight yourself to a table whatever that table exactly entails’,” he says.
“NATO can defend today, but that is not a given in five years’ time. In a more volatile and dangerous world, we must invest more in our own security,” he says.
“We must do this to prevent conflict and protect our way of life.”
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer also bought into Rutte’s, and the US, argument before his visit to the White House, announcing that the UK will spend 2.5 per cent of its GDP on defence by 2027, three years ahead of schedule; that is an extra £13.4bn ($26.7m) a year.
He has also flagged a further rise in defence spending to 3 per cent. The funding is to be raised through a 40 per cent cut in the UK’s foreign aid spending, a move that has already been criticised.
FUNDING BREAKDOWN
- NATO’s civil and military budgets for 2024 were agreed to a meeting of the North Atlantic Council in December 2023.
- The civil budget is set at €438.1 million ($721.5m) with a military budget of €2.03bn ($3.34bn), representing an 18.2 per cent and 12 percent increase, respectively, over 2023’s allocation.
- Last year, 23 NATO members were expected to meet or exceed the target investment at least 2 per cent of GDP in defence compared to only three in 2014.
- In the last 10 years, European countries, and Canada, increased their spending on defence from 1.43 per cent of their GDP in 2014 to 2.02 per cent in 2024 when they spent a combined US$430 billion in defence.
Source: NATO
PART TWO: Caught between a bear and an eagle
