The meeting of NATO defence ministers continues in Brussels on 5 June, where the agenda includes raising defence spending to 5 percent of GDP.
The main purpose of the visit of US Defence Secretary Pete Hagseth, who missed all the meetings with Ukraine (Ramstein and Radu Ukraine-NATO) was precisely to agree on this new figure.
“To be an alliance, you need to be more than just flags – you need combat formations. You need to be more than conferences – you need key combat-ready capabilities,” Hagseth said on arrival for a meeting with ministers.
He said participants had come to “continue the work started by President Trump” – to secure defence spending commitments of 5% of GDP within the alliance. He expressed his belief that such an agreement should take place before the summit in The Hague later this month.
To avoid crises at the NATO summit in The Hague, diplomats said the headquarters was keen to agree on all points before the summit.
“Today is a special day. Normally we gather in Brussels for such meetings to negotiate, consult, discuss and debate. And today is a day of decisions. This is the day when we open the horizon of the future, so to speak, the day when we, NATO defence ministers, take decisions on the alliance’s objectives in the area of defence capabilities,” German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte explained: the main goal of increasing defence spending is to prevent an attack on a member country. To achieve this, NATO must maximise its combat capabilities.
The United States ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, commenting on the need to increase defence spending and the timeframe for achieving this goal, called Russia a threat to NATO. At the same time, diplomats have previously suggested that the US wants to abandon such wording.
“It is not us who determine the deadlines, they are determined by threats. Russia will regroup, rebuild in five years, or even faster,” Whitaker said.
Lithuanian National Defence Minister Dovile Šakalienė insists there is no time to wait and seven years to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP is long overdue.
“…if we all trust our intelligence, if we trust NATO’s military intelligence, and it says that in a few years Russia will be able to test NATO, what are we going to do then? Are we going to ask her to wait, are we going to ask her to delay the deadline?” the official asked, speaking to reporters.
Swedish Defence Minister Paul Johnson stressed the importance of using the available window of opportunity. In his view, if active hostilities in Ukraine cease, the threat from Russia to the alliance will increase:
“After a ceasefire or peace agreement, Russia will of course deploy more forces closer to our borders. It is therefore extremely important that the alliance utilise these few years – now that Russia has limited military options in and around Ukraine. We should use these years, which have become a notional “weekend” because of the war, for a historic build-up of our armed forces. I want to emphasise that this is a historic moment for Europe.
Military assistance to Ukraine will traditionally be counted as NATO member states’ defence spending, i.e. counted towards the 5% figure.
NATO defence ministers gathered on June 5 in Brussels for the last meeting before the annual summit of the alliance, which will be held on June 24-25 in The Hague with the participation of 32 heads of state and government, in particular US President Donald Trump. The main topic of the meeting is money. It is in The Hague that a new target for defence spending is to be formally agreed.