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Those are vastly different threats but their dovetailing effect is driving a historic rearmament by NATO’s European members. Their collective defense spending, which began gradually rising after Putin invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula a decade ago, is now accelerating rapidly.
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Still, few believe it’s growing fast enough to fund the bloc’s redrawn, highly detailed regional war plans — 4,000 pages of classified documents drafted under the direction of U.S. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, supreme allied commander in Europe. Few think Europe is prepared to address the gathering threat posed by an axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And no one views it as adequate to replace tens of billions of dollars in proposed new U.S. aid for Ukraine now frozen on Capitol Hill by hard-line Republican lawmakers.
This year, 20 of NATO’s 31 members, including the United States, are expected to meet or exceed the bloc’s defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product that was set 10 years ago after Putin annexed Crimea. That reflects about $450 billion in additional spending over a decade by Washington’s NATO partners — a number the alliance likes to tout, but comes to just 4.25 percent in average annual increases.
And while Europe’s collective economic might is many times greater than Russia’s, its push to increase defense budgets pales beside Moscow’s roughly 70 percent boost in military spending this year compared with 2023.
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Senior NATO officials now think the gathering strategic threats and the alliance’s own blueprints to defend its borders justify a much greater commitment. They are discussing a minimum increase of one-third over today’s collective military spending by non-U. S. members, to build muscle in five key areas: air and missile defense; long-distance firepower; IT and communications; logistics; and heavy ground combat forces.
That buildup over a decade or more would saddle NATO’s non-U. S. members with a bill of at least $100 billion annually, requiring a seismic political, economic and psychological pivot. It would very likely mean cuts in Europe’s generous social welfare programs, and could blunt intensifying efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, which European officials say could cost $1.6 trillion annually.
Europe has deep pockets, but not deep enough to meet those military, social and environmental goals simultaneously.
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Facing down NATO’s enemies doesn’t translate into armies on the scale of the Cold War, when big European countries had hundreds of thousands of men under arms. But even in an era of tech-driven wars, the buildup NATO foresees would require massive modernization and expansion of forces that atrophied for more than 30 years.
That would be the top priority for Rutte if he is selected to secede Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s next secretary general. A close second on the priority list, if Trump is reelected, would be managing a mercurial president — a job for which Rutte, who deployed both flattery and a firm hand in dealing with Trump when he was president, might be quite well suited.
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BRUSSELS — The Netherlands is touristy and tiny, smaller than West Virginia, but during the Cold War it spelled trouble for the Soviet Union. Its no-nonsense armed forces fielded nearly 1,000 tanks, including hundreds of top-shelf ones designed to help its NATO allies slug it out with Moscow’s army on the northern German plains.
Two decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the Netherlands’ active-duty tank inventory had dropped to zero — a small example of the massive disarmament and military downsizing that took place across Europe after the Cold War ended. “This feels like a funeral,” a Dutch tank commander said at a 2011 ceremony marking the moment when the last lumbering tracked vehicles were decommissioned before they were sold off.
Now, the man who took office as the Netherlands’ prime minister just before it mothballed its last tanks, Mark Rutte, is the odds-on favorite to head the U.S.-led NATO, which is again locked in a long-term test of wills with the Kremlin. And here at NATO headquarters in Brussels, the question is how Rutte, who will soon leave office as Europe’s second-longest-serving premier, would deal with what many regard as a pair of grave threats if he is picked to lead the alliance.
One is President Vladimir Putin’s blood-soaked invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s stunningly swift pivot to a war economy, with soaring military spending that many Europeans fear is a prelude to further Russian aggression against NATO’s vulnerable eastern flank. The other is the specter of a second term for Donald Trump, who disdained the alliance, skewered members that spent paltry amounts for their own defense and shredded seven decades of NATO deterrence doctrine by threatening “never” to help Washington’s European allies if they were attacked.
When I was at NATO headquarters last spring, everyone was focused on Ukraine. Now, one ambassador to the alliance told me, “every discussion we have is about Trump.”
Those are vastly different threats but their dovetailing effect is driving a historic rearmament by NATO’s European members. Their collective defense spending, which began gradually rising after Putin invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula a decade ago, is now accelerating rapidly.
Still, few believe it’s growing fast enough to fund the bloc’s redrawn, highly detailed regional war plans — 4,000 pages of classified documents drafted under the direction of U.S. Gen. Christopher G. Cavoli, supreme allied commander in Europe. Few think Europe is prepared to address the gathering threat posed by an axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. And no one views it as adequate to replace tens of billions of dollars in proposed new U.S. aid for Ukraine now frozen on Capitol Hill by hard-line Republican lawmakers.
This year, 20 of NATO’s 31 members, including the United States, are expected to meet or exceed the bloc’s defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product that was set 10 years ago after Putin annexed Crimea. That reflects about $450 billion in additional spending over a decade by Washington’s NATO partners — a number the alliance likes to tout, but comes to just 4.25 percent in average annual increases.
And while Europe’s collective economic might is many times greater than Russia’s, its push to increase defense budgets pales beside Moscow’s roughly 70 percent boost in military spending this year compared with 2023.
Senior NATO officials now think the gathering strategic threats and the alliance’s own blueprints to defend its borders justify a much greater commitment. They are discussing a minimum increase of one-third over today’s collective military spending by non-U. S. members, to build muscle in five key areas: air and missile defense; long-distance firepower; IT and communications; logistics; and heavy ground combat forces.
That buildup over a decade or more would saddle NATO’s non-U. S. members with a bill of at least $100 billion annually, requiring a seismic political, economic and psychological pivot. It would very likely mean cuts in Europe’s generous social welfare programs, and could blunt intensifying efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, which European officials say could cost $1.6 trillion annually.
Europe has deep pockets, but not deep enough to meet those military, social and environmental goals simultaneously.
Facing down NATO’s enemies doesn’t translate into armies on the scale of the Cold War, when big European countries had hundreds of thousands of men under arms. But even in an era of tech-driven wars, the buildup NATO foresees would require massive modernization and expansion of forces that atrophied for more than 30 years.
That would be the top priority for Rutte if he is selected to secede Jens Stoltenberg as NATO’s next secretary general. A close second on the priority list, if Trump is reelected, would be managing a mercurial president — a job for which Rutte, who deployed both flattery and a firm hand in dealing with Trump when he was president, might be quite well suited.
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