NATO tensions are ‘growing pains,’ U.S. envoy says
Tensions within NATO over the Trump administration’s campaign to pressure allies on defense spending reflect “growing pains” rather than a crisis, the US ambassador to the alliance told CNBC on Monday.
“The goal is for Europe to take over the conventional defense of the European continent,” he said. “We’re not leaving, we’re just doing less,” Ambassador Matthew Whitaker said of U.S. involvement in European defense and security ahead of this week’s NATO summit in Ankara, Türkiye.
Whitaker said European governments see current tensions around defense spending as “escalating problems.”
“I see these as challenges that we have worked on before,” he said, noting the unequal defense spending of European countries; This includes those he calls “left behind” and will commit to increasing that figure over the next decade.
At last year’s NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, allies agreed on a defense spending target of 5% of GDP by 2035; This includes 3.5% of basic defense spending.
This was widely seen as a breakthrough for the transatlantic alliance and came after years of pressure from Washington.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said: The task ahead is to “translate Allies’ commitments into concrete results,” he said as world leaders gathered in Ankara on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Security analysts said the summit will center around “burden shifting” and discuss how allies can organize defense without the United States.
This comes after US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced a review of American forces in Europe in June and warned that allies were failing to meet their spending commitments. may face consequences.
Rutte told a press conference on Monday that the US was “bringing NATO closer together” and that it was “wise” to regularly review defense spending.
Rutte said NATO allies must transform economic tools into military capabilities, overcome fragmented national defense industries and eliminate bureaucracy. He also said “new contracts worth tens of billions of dollars” would be announced at the summit.
Whitaker underlined that Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries and Denmark are clear-eyed about how to address security issues.
Most European countries have significantly increased their defense spending following years of US security guarantees. However, some, such as the UK and France, face more difficult budgetary trade-offs and fiscal constraints than others.
“NATO and our allies were asleep,” Whitaker said. “We revived it and now we’re seeing what that process looks like.”
