NATO Secretary General’s repeated request to members to increase military spending

According to the international group Tasnim news agency quoted by “Spiegel” weekly, Jens Stoltenberg NATO Secretary General, while presenting his annual report for 2023, emphasized: Ukraine needs more ammunition and weapons to defend itself against the Russian attack. Stoltenberg said: “Ukraine needs more support now.

He stressed that this requires political will, especially given the situation in the United States of America, where new aid to Ukraine has been blocked by Republicans. It will be blocked in the Congress.

NATO Secretary General emphasized: Every day delay in this direction has consequences on the battlefield. Stoltenberg spoke of a defining moment. Referring to the Russian president, he said: It is a serious historical mistake to let Putin win. It would be dangerous for all of us.

The NATO Secretary General also urged allies to increase their defense spending. Allies must spend more than two percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense if they want to close existing deficits and meet the demands of a controversial security mandate, the annual report said.

At the NATO summit in Vilnius, member states of this military alliance pledged to invest at least two percent of GDP in defense. According to Stoltenberg, two-thirds of the 32 allies have now met the NATO quota. The NATO Secretary General said that his home country of Norway had just announced this.

At the bottom of this ranking are countries such as Spain (1.24 percent), Belgium (1.21 percent) and Luxembourg (1.01 percent). This NATO military goal has been achieved by the United States, Poland, Great Britain, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, and Slovakia, as well as the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. The leading country in this field was Poland, with defense costs amounting to 3.92% of GDP. The country is still ahead of the United States, which reached 3.24 percent in 2023 according to the latest calculations.

These statistics are especially due to the scenario of Donald Trump returning to the White House after the US presidential election in November. It is very sensitive. During his 2017-2021 presidency, Trump has repeatedly complained about what he sees as too little defense spending by European allies, and has even threatened at times to pull the United States out of the alliance. In a recent campaign appearance, Trump made it clear that he would not support allies with low defense costs if Russia attacked.

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