NATO chief: Europe should be thankful to Trump for military awakening
European countries should be grateful to US President Donald Trump for pushing them to arm themselves more actively, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
He made the remarks during a security discussion session on Europe at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Caliber.Az reports, citing TASS.
“Maybe I’m not on the same wavelength as you because I am defending Donald Trump. But Europe should thank Trump for making us wake up and start building new military capabilities. Do you think that without Trump we would have made the key decision to raise military spending to 5% of GDP? None of this would have happened,” Rutte said.
At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague (24–25 June 2025), NATO leaders agreed on a historic increase in defence spending, moving well beyond the previous benchmark of 2 % of GDP that had been agreed in Wales in 2014. The summit declaration adopted by all 32 NATO members commits them to investing 5 % of their gross domestic product (GDP) annually on defence and related security needs by 2035.
The 5% commitment is structured into two main parts: at least 3.5% of GDP annually for core defence needs, covering traditional military spending that supports NATO capability targets, and up to 1.5% of GDP for defence- and security-related spending, which includes areas such as infrastructure, cyber defence, critical infrastructure protection, support for the defence industrial base, and resilience measures.
By Khagan Isayev
editor@caliber.az
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