Trump’s return loomed large as NATO leaders convened in the Hague, Netherlands, on Tuesday for a two-day gathering focused on boosting the alliance’s defense spending. The annual gathering, which came against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine and an uneasy truce in the Middle East, will be an early test of the transatlantic relationship under a new American administration.
All 32 allies are expected to sign a pledge to raise their military spending from the benchmark of 2 percent of their gross domestic product to 5 percent by 2035. In theory, 3.5 percent of that would go toward “hard defense” expenditures such as troops and weaponry, while 1.5 percent would go toward security infrastructure, including cyber and intelligence capabilities. But the alliance faces an uphill battle in implementing across-the-board spending hikes. As of 2024, eight countries—including Canada, Spain, and Italy—were still falling short of even the 2 percent GDP target, which was agreed upon more than 10 years ago. And none of them have yet passed the 5 percent threshold. Poland is the closest at 4.1 percent, followed by Estonia and the U.S. at 3.4 percent.
In an interview with TMD ahead of the summit, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide emphasized the importance of a greater European commitment to the continent’s shared security. “It is important that Europe’s willing to take more of the burden,” he said, “so not only burden sharing, but burden shifting.” And the increased spending must be accompanied by the understanding that “we have to spend smarter, more strategically, more together, and that we have to have an agreement about what the threat perceptions are,” he added.
Ensuring that fellow NATO members contribute to the alliance’s collective defense has long been one of Trump’s key priorities. “We’re paying for a big proportion of NATO, which is basically protecting Europe,” Trump said in 2019, singling out Germany for not paying its “fair share.” On Tuesday, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte praised the president for catalyzing the alliance’s increased spending. “You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” Rutte wrote in a private message shared by Trump on social media. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”
And indeed, the renewed European emphasis on defense appears at least partly driven by the prospect of an American retreat from the continent’s security. “This new urgency for defense is only partly because of Russia, because of Vladimir Putin,” Liana Fix, a fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations, told TMD. “To a larger extent, it is because of the fear that Europeans might not be able to secure the future of their citizens without the United States.”
These concerns likely stem from public statements by Trump and other administration officials attacking Washington’s European allies. But there’s also a growing understanding among leaders that the continent is becoming less of a priority for the U.S. amid instability in the Middle East and growing fears about an increasingly aggressive China. “There’s been a really growing broad acceptance across NATO, Europe, that the geopolitical landscape has changed,” Stuart Dee, a research leader in defense and security at the Rand Europe think tank, told TMD. “The U.S.’s security priorities are increasingly pulled in many different directions, and Europe’s place in that agenda is changing.”
But for countries on Russia’s doorstep, the ongoing war in Ukraine remains a key issue. Countries closer to Russia are seeking not only to prepare their economies for war, but also their politics and societies. Nordic nations—including Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark—along with the Baltic states—Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia—all already have or have recently reintroduced some form of mandatory military service.
In Norway, roughly 10,000 men and women are selected each year from a broader pool of call-ups, in a distinctive “competitive conscription model.” This year, the draft included Princess Ingrid Alexandra, the 19-year-old daughter of Crown Prince Haakon. But preparing a nation for the threat of armed conflict goes beyond military service, Eide told TMD.
“If you’re responsible in peace, you’re responsible in war,” the Norwegian foreign minister said, explaining how owners of critical infrastructure like water supply, electricity, and telecommunications are now being told to prepare their facilities with redundancies and the ability to make quick repairs. Average citizens are also being asked to stockpile supplies in case of a loss of power or other disruption in critical services in the event of a Russian hybrid operation.
Other countries are taking even more drastic steps. Poland recently unveiled plans to triple its number of active-duty military personnel over the next 10 years and massively expand its reserve forces. In March, Prime Minister Donald Tusk announced that military training, although not mandatory service, would be introduced for every adult male. “It must become a habit, an obvious tradition that every healthy man in Poland should want to train in case of [the necessity to] defend the homeland,” he said.
But European countries further from the frontlines are only just beginning to grapple with the possibility of greater conflict. In the United Kingdom, for example, this has taken the form of a popular fictional podcast, The Wargame, in which former senior politicians acted as part of a British government confronting Russian aggression. In Germany, training programs to prepare citizens for the Bundeswehr, or land forces, have been expanded, with plans for some form of mandatory service currently being debated.
Ahead of the NATO summit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz underscored Berlin’s defense U-turn in an address to parliament. “For far too long, we in Germany didn’t want to hear our Baltic neighbors’ warnings about Russia’s imperialist policies,” he said. “We have recognized this mistake—and there is no going back from this realization.”
But amid friction between Kyiv and Washington, Ukraine’s relationship with the transatlantic alliance remained in limbo going into this year’s gathering. The uncertainty marks a sharp departure from last year, when leaders committed to Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to NATO membership. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is expected to meet with Trump today in a bid to purchase American weapons and encourage the West to ramp up sanctions on Russia.
For Europe’s part, Ukraine’s ability to prevail in the ongoing war is important both in itself and for the future of the continent’s security. “What I raised with all my counterparts in Washington is that it’s important not to see Ukraine just as Ukraine. There’s every reason to stand in solidarity with the brave people of Ukraine, but it’s actually about European security,” Eide said. “All wars end, and after this war, there will be a post-war order. That post-war order has to be solid and sound and predictable, and not full of unfulfilled promises, unsettled issues, simmering conflicts.”
“The desire to move quickly to peace is not bad, but it has to be a good peace. It has to be just and lasting,” he added. “A cheap ceasefire can lead to a very expensive peace.”
