NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte believes that the defense spending threshold of 2% of GDP that the allies imposed on themselves a few years ago is “not nearly enough” for the current situation and has defended it in the European Parliament. the need to increase it to meet the challenges facing Europe. The Dutchman has been “concerned” about the situation on the continent. “We are not at war, but we are not at peace either,” he told MEPs.
Vladimir Putin is the main reason for this concern. Rutte has assured that Russia is “accelerating” the destabilization campaigns of European countries through hybrid attacks, for example. The Nordic and Baltic countries are the ones that suffer the most from this threat. Hence, Rutte has used the same expression that the Swedish Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, used when assuring that the country is not at war but not at peace as an argument to increase surveillance due to fear of sabotage in the submarine cables. Rutte has presented it as a dilemma: “sign up for Russian courses or go to New Zealand” if spending is not increased or increase it and “stay here and defend yourself.”
Rutte has assured that transatlantic allies have to increase cooperation in the military industry or avoid duplication of infrastructure and has assured that, in the case of the EU, it has to take advantage of the “advantage” of the single market. “Cooperation is a win win,” he defended before the MEPs. Rutte himself, who was one of the ‘hawks’ in the European Council as Prime Minister of the Netherlands, has recognized that increasing defense spending means reducing other expenses if states do not raise taxes.
“On average, European countries easily spend up to a quarter of initial income on pensions, healthcare and social security systems, and we only need a small fraction of that money to further strengthen defense,” he justified.
What he did not want is to establish a new threshold and has pointed out that the imposed figure could not be reached if certain conditions are met that allow deductions to be made, such as the commitment to innovation or progress in other capacities.
According to the latest NATO report, defense spending by allies as a whole is 2.54% of GDP, although it differs substantially by country. In fact, without the US the figure drops to 1.8%. Washington’s investment accounts for 3.24% of its wealth (the figure increases to 3.92% in the case of Poland) while Luxembourg (1.01%), Belgium (1.21%) and Spain (1. 24%) are behind.
Don’t anger Trump
The Secretary General of NATO has assured that Putin and his allies, such as the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-Un, “feel empowered” and has called for the maintenance of aid to Ukraine at a time when the allies have doubts that Donald Trump is going to follow Joe Biden’s line, a situation in which the EU assumes that it cannot keep pace with kyiv alone.
“Peace can only last if Ukraine comes to the negotiating table from a position of strength, which is why it needs our help,” said Rutte, who has opted for “more help and faster.”
Rutte has been asked about Ukraine’s entry into NATO and has not commented on dates. “In the future, Ukraine has to be a member of NATO,” he simply said before assuring that “through bilateral security agreements” and with the promise of 40 billion, that path is being “built.” “When peace negotiations begin, it will be essential for Russia to understand that after these negotiations it will not be accepted that they attack Ukraine again. The future relationship between Ukraine and NATO will have to be mapped out, I hope within NATO, but it is too early to talk about it now. I hope that soon we can talk about security guarantees for Ukraine because it will mean that it is at the negotiating table,” explained the Dutchman, who has recognized that kyiv is not currently in the position of strength necessary to start that negotiation.
The question most asked by MEPs has been the situation in which NATO remains in the face of Donald Trump’s threat to Greenland, a territory administered by Denmark (also a member of the Atlantic alliance), over which the president-elect of the United States has not ruled out military action to control it. Rutte did not want to enter into the controversy and limited himself to saying that there is a debate about the security of the Arctic beyond “who controls Greenland.” “I am convinced that the United States will be on the side of NATO,” concluded Rutte, whose policy is not to anger Trump and has repeated on several occasions that the Republican was right in the past, such as when he advocated increasing spending on defense. “He has been right many times and he may be right in the future,” he stated.
Source: www.eldiario.es
