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.
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