NATO threatens allies who spend less on defense: "You will receive a call from Washington from a very nice man"

BrusselsNATO is further increasing the pressure on its allies that spend the least on defence. The Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance, the Dutchman Mark Rutte, went a step further on Thursday and threatened to All the states that, like Spain, do not spend more than 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on security this summer: "You will receive a call from Washington from a very nice man." Rutte is obviously referring to US President Donald Trump, who before returning to the White House had threatened European allies not to increase military spending. by leaving them in the lurch in case they are attacked, for example, by the regime of Vladimir Putin.

Rutte's pressures, however, do not end here. The NATO Secretary General, who has been fully aligned with the Trump administration, it is not enough for him that allies spend more than 2% of their GDP on defence, as the treaties of the entity now state, nor that they reach 3%, as he himself had requested until now. In line with the Pentagon, Rutte has urged allies to spend "considerably more than 3%" on security. At this point, Trump still maintains that all partners must reach at least 5%, a rate that no partner of the Atlantic Alliance would meet, not even the United States.

In addition, he wants allies to reach these milestones in a completely mandatory and standard way. At the 2014 NATO summit, when it was decided that at least all partners should exceed 2%, no deadlines were set. However, Rutte warned at a press conference in Bratislava (Slovakia) that the meeting of leaders of the Atlantic Alliance next June in The Hague will be "different." "We must decide on a path to achieve the new objectives with ambitious deadlines," said the former Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

This condition is precisely what the states that spend less on defense and are more reluctant to increase this spending want to avoid. Diplomatic sources from NATO point out that there are allies who, although they assume that the spending target will increase, will try to negotiate because the "engagement vocabulary" should be as open as possible. That is, they have more time to reach these goals.

It must be remembered that at this time there are still a dozen NATO states which do not even reach the minimum of 2% that was agreed in 2014. Spain, for example, is still at 1.28% and does not expect to reach 2% until 2029. In addition, unlike other allies, Pedro Sánchez flatly refuses to accelerate the increase in military spending.

Rutte, another of Trump's men

NATO's secretary general never had a very good reputation among European leaders. When he was prime minister of the Netherlands he earned the nicknames Mr. No and Trump whisper, because he always put obstacles in the way of any measure that would strengthen the union of the community bloc and was very close to the then president of the USA. And now, at the head of the Atlantic Alliance, he is not helping the heads of state and government of Europe either in the face of the return of the New York magnate to the White House, but rather the opposite.

Rutte constantly plays down Trump's threats, whether about the military spending of European allies, Greenland or generally the war in Ukraine, and limits himself almost to acting as a spokesman for the Pentagon. Thus, he is increasingly increasing the pressure on European allies to spend more on defense and, for example, at the Munich Conference last weekend he said that if Europe wants a seat in the negotiations on the Ukrainian conflict, it must be earned.

In this regard, the NATO Secretary General urged European allies to "increase military spending" and "guarantee military training and the supply of weapons" to Ukrainian troops, although he ignored the fact that the European Union is the ally. who has helped Ukraine the most during these almost three years of war and exceeds the contributions of the United States. "I would say to my European friends not to enter the debate complaining about whether they are at the table or not, but with concrete proposals and ideas about what form security guarantees [to ensure compliance with a potential ceasefire or peace agreement] could take, for example," the Dutch leader added.