Donald Trump is setting the course for his presidency with a view to NATO. He makes horrendous demands on his allies. Can this work?
He did it again. The future US President Donald Trump has called on NATO partners to spend five percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense. The alliance members had actually agreed on two percent, but that is apparently no longer enough for the Republican. With his initiative, Trump is once again shaking up the Western world shortly before his inauguration and a few weeks before the federal election.
“They can all afford it, but they should be at five percent and not two percent,” said the 78-year-old, who will begin his second term as US president on January 20, at the press conference on Tuesday in his private residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Germany had not reached the two percent mark for a long time, but because of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, defense spending has risen sharply in recent years. In this country too, there are repeated calls for further increases in defense spending. Green Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck, for example, advocates spending 3.5 percent of GDP in the election campaign. But can Germany actually manage this? And how realistic is the implementation of Donald Trump’s higher demands?
The alliance’s current long-term two percent target dates back to the NATO summit in Lithuania in 2023. Previously, the alliance partners had only decided in 2014 to work towards two percent. At that time, most Member States were below this mark. This has now changed in the wake of the increasing threat from Russia, but not all partners meet the requirement.
According to the latest NATO statistics from June 2024, of the 32 NATO states, only eight countries are below two percent, although Iceland is not taken into account as a member without its own armed forces. These eight countries are Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia and Spain.
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However, all members of the alliance are far from Trump’s ideal of five percent – including the USA itself. The leaders in this statistic are the countries Poland and Estonia, which border Russia. According to the June estimate, Germany will have 2.12 percent in 2024, which is primarily due to the special Bundeswehr fund that the Bundestag decided on after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
It is no surprise that Trump is now making this demand. There were already corresponding reports at the end of December. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said at the time that the alliance needed “much more than two percent.” He warned that European countries were not prepared for the threat of a future war with Russia. It was probably preparation for what Donald Trump announced on Tuesday.
Defense expert Ulrike Franke has long observed that future US President Donald Trump has a “fascination” with NATO. “He sees the organization as an example of how the Europeans are exploiting the USA,” she tells t-online. This is also why he threatened to leave the alliance during his first term in office.
Ulrike Franke (born 1986) is a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). She researches German and European security and defense policy, particularly the role of drones and new technologies in warfare. Frank holds a PhD from Oxford University.
But today the discussion is different: “There is a lot of talk about the concept of ‘dormant NATO’,” says Franke. Accordingly, the USA would not withdraw, but would withdraw somewhat from the alliance. “According to this logic, the USA would only do the bare minimum within NATO – i.e. provide the nuclear protective shield,” explains the defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Trump could follow this concept.
NATO itself is a means of pressure for Trump on the Europeans, said Franke. There are two reasons for this: “Because the division of labor within NATO is indeed unbalanced and because more defense spending in Europe inevitably means more revenue for the US defense industry.”
