Eighteen of the 31 NATO member states will spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense this year. That is a record, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday at the start of a meeting with defense ministers of NATO countries in Brussels.
This jointly agreed minimum was only achieved by three NATO members in 2014, the year that Russia invaded Crimea. The European NATO countries will spend a combined $380 billion on defense this year.
Stoltenberg's figures come just days after US presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever they want” with NATO countries that are still not meeting the agreed standard. He thus suggested that the principle of Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one is considered an attack on all, no longer has any value for him.
“The purpose of NATO is to prevent war,” Stoltenberg said in response to Trump. “Any suggestion that we are not standing up for each other undermines the credibility of all of us.” NATO's deterrent power, he said, “has to do with investments, but also with how we communicate.”
Fair sharing
Stoltenberg said Europe is on the right track in terms of that spending. In addition to the United States, Poland, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Romania, Hungary, the United Kingdom and Slovenia are among the 2 percent. The Netherlands does not achieve this. Germany, which last reached 2 percent in 1992 and long refused to invest more in the army, would also reach 2 percent in 2024, according to the DPA news agency.
Not only Europe has an interest in transatlantic defense cooperation, the United States also becomes “stronger and more secure” as a result, according to Stoltenberg. According to him, Trump's criticism is not criticism of NATO, but of countries that are lagging behind in their investments.
“That's a valid point and one that successive US administrations have made: European allies and Canada need to spend more because the burden in the alliance was not fairly shared. The good news is that NATO allies are doing just that.”
#NATO #countries #spend #record #amounts #defense
