NATO allies have begun to work out an agreement on a significant increase in defense spending in a way that could satisfy US President Donald Trump's demand to spend 5% of GDP on military needs, Bloomberg reports, UNN writes.
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Negotiators in the military alliance are making progress toward reaching 5% of GDP on defense and defense-related spending by 2032 ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in The Hague in June, according to diplomats familiar with the matter. NATO foreign ministers will discuss the initiative at a meeting in the Turkish resort city of Antalya on Wednesday and Thursday.
The meeting in the Mediterranean takes place against the backdrop of a diplomatic push, as the Trump administration seeks to end the war in Ukraine, which has been going on for more than three years. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was ready to meet face-to-face with Vladimir Putin in Istanbul on Thursday. The Russian leader has given no indication that he will come.
An agreement on defense spending on the scale that Trump demands - none of the 32 NATO members, including the United States, has reached this threshold - would mark the largest increase in spending by Western allies since the end of the Cold War.
Since his first term, Trump has criticized allies for failing to reach the long-standing threshold of 2% spending. Eight of the 32 allies have not reached 2% spending, according to NATO's annual report in April.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is pushing allies to agree to a level of 3.5% of GDP over the next seven years, with an additional 1.5% earmarked for a wider range of defense-related spending, according to senior diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.
Rutte, speaking to reporters in the United States last month, said that the goal of the summit in The Hague, Trump's first summit since returning to the White House, would be to rebalance spending in the alliance, given the huge share of the United States compared to European NATO allies and Canada.
Ministers in Antalya will discuss what expenses will be included in the 1.5% component, including areas such as military mobility, dual-use goods and cybersecurity, diplomats said, adding that negotiations are in the early stages. It remains unclear whether this segment will include existing spending or require new commitments.
Rutte's proposal includes a regular and rigorous verification mechanism, unlike the looser targets that allies currently set.
Increasing spending to the order of magnitude under discussion would be a huge challenge, said one senior European diplomat, although many now see the effort as necessary to send a strong signal to the Kremlin.
Some NATO members, including Italy and Spain, have recently announced that they have reached the 2% level. According to a person familiar with the matter, they are all expected to reach the old criterion by the summit.
The new core target of 3.5% is based on ambitious new defense plans being developed by NATO. The alliance has distributed detailed, strictly classified lists of weapons and other capabilities among the governments of member states, which will be discussed by defense chiefs in Brussels on Wednesday.
The lists, known as capability targets, have been widely endorsed by allies and are likely to be signed at a meeting of defense ministers in Brussels in early June, according to people familiar with the discussions. This will only leave the need for formal approval at the summit in The Hague on June 24-25.
The summit is expected to be shorter than previous meetings and will focus on spending and industrial growth, culminating in a short declaration, according to European diplomats. One diplomat said the theme would be the alliance, not the future of Ukraine.
"Trump's skepticism about Ukraine's membership in NATO has now taken this option off the table - and the continuation of NATO's pledge to allocate $40 billion to support the war-torn country, made last year, was also not discussed," the publication writes.
Another Rutte initiative on the table includes a review of the alliance's effectiveness and internal governance, according to people familiar with the discussions. An attempt to shake things up may appeal to the US president, one person said.