LONDON — Washington’s European allies must make a “quantum leap” in military spending to deter Russia, the head of NATO said Monday, calling for a 400% increase in the continent’s air and missile defense budget.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte’s comments are among the organization’s strongest yet as it tries to improve Europe’s insufficient defenses against Russia while also avoiding the political ire of President Donald Trump.
“The fact is, we need a quantum leap in our collective defense,” Rutte said at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “The fact is, we must have more forces and capabilities to implement our defense plans in full. The fact is, danger will not disappear even when the war in Ukraine ends.”
Trump's clear signaling that he would like to at least significantly reduce decades of American military support for Europe has sent its nations scrambling to beef up their own arms industries.
Trump's call for NATO allies to up their minimum defense spending from 2% to 5% of GDP was once seen as outlandish; but last month Rutte too backed this idea and said he expected it to be adopted at NATO's June 24-25 summit.
On Monday he made a similarly ambitious call. He asked for a “400% increase in air and missile defense” and added that “militaries also need thousands more armored vehicles and tanks, millions more artillery shells, and we must double our enabling capabilities, such as logistics, supply, transportation, and medical support.”
“Wishful thinking will not keep us safe,” he said. “We cannot dream away the danger. Hope is not a strategy. So NATO has to become a stronger, fairer and more lethal alliance.”
Rutte's speech comes against the backdrop of European powers vowing to spend more on their military budgets, having relied for decades upon America's protection first against the Soviet Union and now Putin's revanchist Kremlin.
NATO's constituents must also maintain a balancing act when it comes to Ukraine, which is not a member. Kyiv's allies want to support a neighbor it sees as a bulwark against Russian aggression while keeping a White House increasingly sympathetic to Moscow's worldview onside.
Trump has described his “very, very good relationship” with Putin, a man considered a pariah by former President Joe Biden and other Western leaders.
Many officials and analysts in Europe acknowledge that Trump is right to demand that wealthy nations such as Germany be able to look after themselves without Washington's help.
However, many of these same commentators have expressed their horror at the tactics used by Trump, who has suggested that the United States would not protect underpaying allies and openly invited Russia to “do whatever the hell” it wants to them.
That risks shattering the central premise of NATO: Article 5 of its founding charter — an “all-for-one and one-for-all” mutual defense promise suggesting that if one ally is attacked, the rest would come to its aid.
The scenario the founders had in mind was that the U.S. would join the fight if Russia decided to launch an act of aggression against a smaller European country. In practice, however, the only time it has been used in the real world was the other way round, when the alliance lent Washington symbolic defensive help after 9/11.
Previous American presidents have always seen this as a good trade off: America underwrites European security, and in return has a huge influence over political, diplomatic and even cultural happenings on the continent and beyond. The soft power return on investment was always seen as a profitable one.
However, Trump has repeatedly questioned this logic, not only undermining the promise behind Article 5 but using hostile language against those historically considered Western brethren.
The realization among European allies that Washington is no longer committed to its mutual defense has sparked a drive to push up defense budgets and revive the long-since dormant arms industry on the continent.
