Trump Takes Victory Lap on NATO Spending

President Donald Trump has secured a commitment to increase defense spending from European allies at this week’s NATO summit, held at The Hague in the Netherlands. 

“Allies commit to invest 5% of [gross domestic product] annually on core defense requirements as well as defense- and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure our individual and collective obligations,” the 32-member nations of NATO said in a statement Wednesday. 

Mark Rutte, the secretary-general of NATO and a former prime minister of The Netherlands, attributed the promised increases in defense spending to Trump.

“For too long, one ally, the United States, carried too much of the burden of that commitment—and that changes today. President Trump—dear Donald—you made this change possible,” Rutte said at the conference.

Critics were quick to point out that the statement eschewed the word “all” before allies, and at least one member country, Spain, has already announced it would not meet the target. Still, the commitment is a significant victory for the president, given that he has long criticized the alliance countries for prioritizing generous social safety nets at the expense of defense spending while the U.S. foots the bill with its nearly $1 trillion annual defense budget. 

Indeed, Trump in the past called NATO “obsolete” as a result of its failure to take “care of terror,” and has repeatedly criticized the alliance countries for failing to live up to their share of the bargain by committing more to defense spending. 

The president reiterated the point yesterday on Tuesday of this week, saying, “There’s a problem with Spain. Spain is not agreeing, which is very unfair to the rest of them, frankly.”

The president appeared hopeful going into the meeting with the other nations, writing beforehand on the platform TruthSocial, that “at worst, it [the conference] will be a much calmer period than what I just went through with Israel and Iran.” 

NATO was created in 1949 as a counterbalance to Soviet aggression in Europe. Article 5 of the treaty stipulates that an attack against one or more of the NATO member states will be considered an attack against all of them. The article was invoked after the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the U.S.

After the Cold War ended, the alliance continued to be a countervailing force against the military of the newly created Russian Federation. The original defense pact signed in 1949 had just 12 countries: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the U.S., and the United Kingdom. In the succeeding decades, the alliance moved eastward, adding several other European countries to its ranks, including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were once a part of the Soviet Union. A total of 32 nations now make up the alliance, with Finland and Sweden being the most recent nations to join. Finland joined the pact in 2023, and Sweden joined in 2024. 

Trump also criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin at the summit, saying that the Russian leader had “been misguided” and expressing his consternation that solving the war between Ukraine and Russia has not been accomplished yet.

“I’m very surprised, actually. I thought we would have had that settled,” Trump said.

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