NATO secretary says two-thirds of alliance will meet defense spending goal amid Trump threats

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday said 20 of the alliance’s 32 member states will spend at least two per cent of their respective gross domestic products on defense, meeting a threshold which former president Donald Trump has repeatedly mischaracterized as a prerequisite to receiving American help in a crisis.

Stoltenberg made the announcement during remarks at the Wilson Center in Washington, not long before he was set to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House.

The record number of NATO countries meeting the 2 per cent defense spending goal marks a quadrupling from 2021, when only six of the alliance’s members spent that amount despite it being a longstanding goal of the now 32-member block.

But in the years since Biden took office, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has galvanized the Western defensive pact, which is set to hold its’ 75th annual summit in Washington next month.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, two long-neutral nations — Finland and Sweden — have been admitted to the alliance, and Kyiv has expressed a desire to join at an appropriate time following the resolution of the now two and a half-year-old war with Russia.

The effort by most of the alliance’s members to spend two per cent on defense also represents what appears to be a preemptive effort to hedge against an unfavorable American election result should Biden be defeated by his predecessor, former president Donald Trump, when US voters go to the polls in November.

Former officials who served in the White House during Trump term in office have said the then-president repeatedly threatened to pull America out of the North Atlantic Treaty and would seek to carry out that threat in a second term.

Trump has also threatened to withhold American military assistance to member states that do not meet the two per cent spending goal, which he has often described as if an individual nation’s defense spending is the same as dues paid to a country club or money paid as part of a protection racket.

In February, Trump bragged of having told NATO heads of state that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that are “delinquent.”

Speaking at a rally in South Carolina, he told supporters he would let Moscow run rampant over countries that did not, in his estimation, spend enough on their own defense.

“‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recalled saying. “‘No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”