NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the increase in military spending by Alliance countries on Wednesday, a few days after harsh criticism from Donald Trump on bad payers in Europe.
Long demanded by the United States, this increase was thunderously recalled last week by the former American president and likely Republican candidate in the November election.
“We should not weaken the credibility of NATO’s deterrence,” Mr. Stoltenberg warned the press on Wednesday, after having condemned comments over the weekend that “undermine our security.”
“We must leave no room for possible miscalculations or misunderstandings in Moscow regarding our degree of preparation, our commitment and our determination to protect the Allies,” he asserted.
The secretary general of the organization also highlighted the efforts made by the European Allies over the past ten years.
Eighteen out of 31 NATO countries will hit the 2% of GDP target for military spending this year, he told a conference ahead of a meeting of alliance defense ministers in Brussels .
“This is another record number,” he stressed, adding that only three countries in 2014 had reached this 2% target.
“We are making real progress, the European Allies are spending more,” he insisted. And there would be 11 in 2023, according to an estimate published by NATO.
“The money flowed freely”
However, he immediately stressed, “some Allies still have a long way to go.” “We agreed at the summit (in Vilnius, Lithuania) that all Allies should invest 2% and that 2% was a minimum,” recalled Mr. Stoltenberg.
NATO has not disclosed the list of countries that have reached the 2% target, but Germany has indicated it will be among them this year and France next year.
The United States nonetheless remains, by far, the largest contributor to NATO’s budget.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 helped encourage Europeans to invest more in their defenses.
Which didn’t stop Donald Trump from taking all the credit. The latter thus affirmed that he had made the Alliance “strong” under his mandate (2017-2021).
“When I told the 20 countries that weren’t paying their fair share that they had to pay or they wouldn’t get American protection, the money flowed in,” he said. “But now that I’m no longer here to say ‘you have to pay’, here they go again! “.
If his attacks against bad payers within the Alliance are not new, his comments encouraging Russia to attack one of them shocked.
“It’s a change of scale, an alignment with Russia which is dangerous,” underlined a NATO diplomat.
However, these remarks above all show the need for Europeans – 29 out of 31 countries within NATO – to “take their responsibilities in matters of defense”, added this diplomat.
“I think we would do well not to constantly look, like the rabbit to the snake, at the possible Republican candidate for president, but rather to do our homework,” declared German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. , upon his arrival at NATO headquarters.
And this responsibility also passes through Ukraine, another issue of this ministerial meeting.
A meeting of countries supporting the Ukrainian war effort is planned for Wednesday on the sidelines of the ministerial meeting, in the absence of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, and while US aid of more than $60 million for of Kiev is still blocked in Congress due to a veto by Trumpist Republican elected officials.
French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu and his German counterpart, for their part, announced the launch of a coalition which will bring together a total of 15 countries with the stated objective of strengthening Ukraine’s air defense capabilities.