Sánchez stands up to Trump (and angers him)
Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has stood firm in his refusal to allocate 3.5% of GDP to military spending at the NATO summit in The Hague, despite having signed the final declaration. This has provoked the ire of Donald Trump, who, in his usual style, threatened Spain with "We will make you pay double," personally threatening to retaliate for this decision. Sánchez has deviated from a script designed to please Trump and thus avoid the temptation for the US leader to break with his European partners. Hence the excessive praise of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte for Trump, both in public and private, and a staged display designed to flatter the US president.
It's hard to believe that all the states that have signed the declaration are truly thinking when they increase their arms spending so significantly, which would endanger the European welfare state, but only Sánchez has dared to make it explicit, to point out that the king has no clothes. One might think that Sánchez is taking a big risk by directly confronting the most powerful man on the planet, but it's also true that someone needs to make him understand that he can't just impose his will everywhere like a trigger-happy sheriff. At some point, it's necessary to stand up, as Harvard University has done in the academic sphere, for example, and point out that it's all nonsense.
Because the 5% figure for defense (3.5% for weapons and 1.5% for other issues such as cybersecurity) is completely arbitrary and is a debate designed only to give Trump the headline he's looking for, which is that he will force Europeans to pay more, that is, to buy more weapons from the United States. Reducing the debate to a percentage of GDP investment is equivalent to putting the cart before the horse. If NATO, and specifically European countries, truly want to increase their operational capabilities, what must be done urgently is to move towards a single European army, with a coordinated command structure and a single purchasing center. It would also be necessary to promote an independent arms industry that would reduce strategic dependence on the United States.
Instead of addressing these debates, European NATO member countries now seem only concerned with not losing the protection of the United States, and are laughing at all the jokes of a president who has already proven himself a real danger to democracy, the global economy, and geopolitical stability. Someone who one day announces tariffs, then withdraws them, who bombs Iran, who flirts with Putin and humiliates Zelensky, and who has now set his sights on Pedro Sánchez. It remains to be seen to what extent he ultimately follows through on his threats, but what cannot be denied is that Sánchez has defended what many European leaders, and surely the majority of the continent's public, truly believe.
