By refusing to agree spending increases to appease US President Donald Trump, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez threatened to derail a summit that NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte needs to run smoothly for the sake of the military alliance’s future survival.
Ahead of yesterday’s gathering in The Hague, Netherlands, things were going off the rails. European officials have expressed irritation at the spoiler role that Sanchez is playing when their No. 1 task is to line up behind a pledge to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. Rutte needed to keep Spain in line while preventing others such as Slovakia from breaking ranks.
Given that the entire summit has been designed around Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron did not help matters by saying that US and Israeli strikes on Iran lacked a legal basis. They are not comments that would be well-received by the US leader, who already snapped at Macron at the G7 summit.
Photo: AFP
The NATO leaders were meeting against the backdrop of heightened tensions in the Middle East. Trump yesterday declared a ceasefire between Iran and Israel, after a week that saw the US target Iranian nuclear sites and Iran retaliate with a telegraphed move on a US air base in Qatar.
Meanwhile, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is well into its fourth year, with Russian President Vladimir Putin continuing to make hardline demands for territory.
As host, and making his own debut in the top job, it was shaping up to be a worst-case scenario for the Dutch secretary-general on his home soil. The risk is that Trump, who has already cottoned on to “notorious” Spain and has kept his trip short, sees the divisions spill out into the open and gets an excuse to walk out.
Rather than securing his iron-clad pledge to stand by the post-World War II alliance’s most sacrosanct principle of collective defense known as Article 5 (an attack on one is an attack on all), Spanish intransigence on spending could throw the optics into disarray.
“Spain thinks they can achieve those targets on a percentage of 2.1 percent” of GDP, Rutte told reporters on Monday. “NATO is absolutely convinced Spain will have to spend 3.5 percent to get there.”
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico joined Spain in saying that his nation now would also reserve a right to decide how fast and by how much it increases its defense budget. Slovakia can meet the alliance’s requirements without hiking spending to the 5 percent level, he said.
All member nations have signed off on ambitious new lists of weapons and troops — so-called capability targets — that each needs to provide as part of its NATO commitment. The alliance has broken down the 5 percent goal to 3.5 percent spending on defense with an additional 1.5 percent dedicated to related investment.
“Each country will now regularly report what they are doing in terms of spending and reaching the targets,” Rutte said. “So we will see, and anyway there will be a review in 2029.”
Spain has refused to sign up to the 5 percent target, while also assuring NATO that it would fulfill the capability requirements. It is arguing that 2.1 percent of defense spending would be sufficient to achieve that.
FIREPOWER: On top of the torpedoes, the military would procure Kestrel II anti-tank weapons systems to replace aging license-produced M72 LAW launchers Taiwan is to receive US-made Mark 48 torpedoes and training simulators over the next three years, following delays that hampered the navy’s operational readiness, the Ministry of National Defense’s latest budget proposal showed. The navy next year would acquire four training simulator systems for the torpedoes and take receipt of 14 torpedoes in 2027 and 10 torpedoes in 2028, the ministry said in its budget for the next fiscal year. The torpedoes would almost certainly be utilized in the navy’s two upgraded Chien Lung-class submarines and the indigenously developed Hai Kun, should the attack sub successfully reach operational status. US President Donald Trump
TPP RALLY: The clashes occurred near the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Saturday at a rally to mark the anniversary of a raid on former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je People who clashed with police at a Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) rally in Taipei on Saturday would be referred to prosecutors for investigation, said the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the National Police Agency. Taipei police had collected evidence of obstruction of public officials and coercion by “disorderly” demonstrators, as well as contraventions of the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法), the ministry said in a statement on Sunday. It added that amid the “severe pushing and jostling” by some demonstrators, eight police officers were injured, including one who was sent to hospital after losing consciousness, allegedly due to heat stroke. The Taipei
NO LIVERPOOL TRIP: Taiwan’s Lin Yu-ting, who won a gold medal in the boxing at the Paris Olympics, was embroiled in controversy about her gender at that event Taiwanese boxer Lin Yu-ting (林郁婷) will not attend this year’s World Boxing Championships in Liverpool, England, due to a lack of response regarding her sex tests from the organizer, World Boxing. The national boxing association on Monday said that it had submitted all required tests to World Boxing, but had not received a response as of Monday, the departure day for the championships. It said the decision for Lin to skip the championships was made to protect its athletes, ensuring they would not travel to the UK without a guarantee of participation. Lin, who won a gold medal in the women’s 57kg boxing
The US has revoked Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) authorization to freely ship essential gear to its main Chinese chipmaking base, potentially curtailing its production capabilities at that older-generation facility. American officials recently informed TSMC of their decision to end the Taiwanese chipmaker’s so-called validated end user (VEU) status for its Nanjing site. The action mirrors steps the US took to revoke VEU designations for China facilities owned by Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc. The waivers are set to expire in about four months. “TSMC has received notification from the US Government that our VEU authorization for TSMC Nanjing
RSS