US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived with a message of reassurance and firm instructions for skittish NATO foreign ministers as they assembled at alliance headquarters in Brussels on Thursday: We are here to stay, now double your collective defense spending.
“The United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been,” Rubio told reporters, standing next to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the start of the two-day meeting. “President Trump’s made clear he supports NATO. We’re going to remain in NATO.”
If Donald Trump’s support for NATO had been understood clearly in Europe in recent months, it was not evident. Since he took office for the second time in January, he has repeatedly suggested the US could decline to come to the aid of allies that did not meet NATO defense spending targets if they were attacked, undermining the mutual defence pact that is a core NATO tenet.
The US president also stunned Europeans with his desire to annex Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory that is part of Denmark, and by opening bilateral talks with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, largely sidelining other NATO members that like Washington have funelled hundreds of billions of dollars to Kyiv.
But Rubio, who himself ran for the US presidency in 2016 as a traditional conservative candidate, suggested there had been some misunderstanding.
“Some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is unwarranted,” the US secretary of state said.
Rubio and Rutte stress NATO unity despite tensions
Rutte, who took over as NATO chief in 2024, also underlined the transatlantic bond.
“We know that the United States is a staunch ally in NATO,” he said. “But that commitment comes with an expectation, and the expectation is that the European allies and Canada need to spend more.”
The former Dutch prime minister said that Canada and European allies had boosted their defense spending by 700 billion euros since 2017. In a likely bid to appease the US, Rutte stressed that NATO allies should all be aiming to spend “north of 3%” of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense.
A now heavily militarized Russia waging war on NATO’s doorstep in Ukraine, but also the increasingly unpredictable behavior of the US under the Trump administration, has sent Europe on a defense spending spree in recent months.
“The Russian threat will be there for many years to come,” Rutte said Thursday.
Well before Trump, the US had urged all NATO allies must meet the agreed target of spending 2% of their GDP on defense. Most NATO countries now do so, with the average spend in 2024 at 2.7%.
On Thursday, Rubio recalled the Trump administration’s new goal.
“We do want to leave here with an understanding that we are on a pathway, a realistic pathway, to every single one of the members committing and fulfilling a promise to reach up to 5%,” he said.
This also included the US, he said, which currently spends 3.5%.
Bombshell tariffs overshadow goodwill message
Rubio’s task of putting fellow NATO members at ease was made even harder on Wednesday when Trump announced tariffs that many fear could kick off global trade war. A 10%-levy now applies to virtually all goods imported into the US. Goods from the European Union, which includes 23 of the 31 NATO member states, face tariffs of 20 percent.
Arriving at the talks o Thursday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot acknowledged that transatlantic unity was “being tested by the decisions taken and announced yesterday by President Trump.”
Outgoing German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that economic security was “part of all of security overall.”
Nonetheless, ministers from various countries stressed they still saw the US as an ally.
NATO grapples with big questions
In general, European NATO allies are preparing for US disengagement as it pivots to Asia; the Trump administration is gravely concerned about China.
One scenario preoccupying Europe is that the US could draw down some of the roughly 100,000 troops it has stationed in Europe at present, a number that was boosted by 20,000 under former US President Joe Biden after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Asked about the possibility, Rutte said that the issue was not new and that there were “no plans for them to all of a sudden draw down their presence here in Europe.”
But as it looks ahead to a NATO summit in the Dutch city The Hague in June, the 75-year-old alliance’s main preoccupation will certainly be the war in Ukraine, with Trump still negotiating with Moscow and with Kyiv, but without having reached a lasting peace deal so far. In the long term, the US is keen for Europe to take over responsibility for Ukraine’s security.
Was Rubio’s message convincing?
For Rafael Loss of the European Council on Foreign Relations, it is unlikely that Rubio has put allies at ease in light of recent noises coming out of the US.
“Europeans don’t find that particularly reassuring, especially after the tariff announcement from [Wednesday], now that we are in a trade war with the US,” he told DW.
The prospect of any NATO member spending 5% of its GDP on defense is not likely.
“For that you effectively need a command economy like Russia’s. In the Cold War some NATO allies spent 5% or more on defense, but they were an exception, mostly it was upwards of 3%,” he said.
Russia is expected to spend upwards of 6% of its GDP on defense in 2025.
In the next few months, Europeans will be looking at exactly what they need to be spending on.
“Europeans know they need to do more in many different ways going towards the NATO summit,” Loss said. “It’s about its capabilities and what the shopping list means for spending.”
Edited by: Carla Bleiker
