Rubio says US will stay in NATO, but allies need to boost defense spending
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reassured allies that Donald Trump is not anti-NATO and that the country will remain in the alliance, but he's also asking his counterparts to make sacrifices and raise defence spending to 5%.
“The United States President Trump's made clear he supports NATO, we're going to remain in NATO,” Rubio told reporters in Brussels, stressing that the US wants the alliance to be stronger against any potential threat, News.Az reports, citing foreign media.
“The only way NATO can get stronger and more viable is if our partners, the nation states that comprise this important alliance, have more capability,” he added.
The top US diplomat said he expects to leave Brussels with a clear commitment from allies to spend 5% of their GDP on defence—an increase from the current 2%, which some European countries, such as Belgium, Italy, and Spain, still fail to meet.
“I understand there's domestic politics after decades of building up vast social safety net that maybe don't want to take away from that and invest more in national security, but a full-scale ground war in the heart of Europe is a reminder that hard power is still necessary as a deterrent,” he said.
The transatlantic alliance is assessing its capability gaps before committing to a new defence spending target, but a final figure is not expected until the annual NATO summit in June in The Hague.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stressed that European NATO members have recently committed to the largest increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War, though he agreed with the US that more must be done.
“It's my assumption that what we need to spend, the Canadians and Europeans together, will be north of 3%,” the former Dutch prime minister said on his way in to the two-day meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in Brussels.
Rubio stressed that raising defence spending to 5% cannot be done "in one year or two", but the US now demands a real way forward from its allies to build a stronger NATO capable of defending its territories.
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