(Bloomberg) — NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed the alliance will seek to adopt a new defense spending target of 5% of GDP at a June summit, meeting a demand by US President Donald Trump that had originally seemed unrealistic.
“I assume that in The Hague we will agree on a higher defense spending target of in total 5%,” Rutte said during a televised question and answer session at the NATO parliamentary assembly in the US.
Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof had mentioned this number as having been proposed by the secretary general, and Bloomberg reported the positive momentum toward reaching it. This was the first public endorsement for the target by Rutte.
The proposal includes a 3.5% target for hard defense spending and an extra 1.5% for defense-related outlays such as infrastructure for military mobility. Rutte didn’t not confirm the specifics but said the target for hard defense spending would be “considerably north of 3%” with an extra target for related spending.
Trump first demanded allies spend 5% earlier this year after threatening to pull out of the alliance or to only protect the allies that spent enough on defense. The figure was widely regarded as unrealistic when he first mentioned it, but European allies and Canada have come around to the understanding that their spending had to drastically increase.
Only 23 out of 32 allies reached the current spending target of 2%, according to NATO’s annual report published in April. But all of them are expected to meet it by the summer, Bloomberg reported.
–With assistance from Katharina Rosskopf.
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