NATO seeks more funds from members - Rutte aims to increase investments, despite tensions with the US
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has urged the 32 member countries to devote more funds, equipment and political energy to the world's largest military alliance.
"In 2025, we must significantly increase our efforts to ensure that NATO remains a key source of military advantage for all our nations. Our continued freedom and prosperity depend on it," Rutte wrote in the annual report.
NATO has been disorganized since February, when US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that America's security priorities lie elsewhere and that Europe will have to take care of its own security and that of Ukraine.
Rutte's report was posted on NATO's website without any visible publicity. In previous years, secretaries general have promoted their annual reports with press conferences and announcements.
Rutte visited Washington for meetings with senior US officials, two months before he chairs a summit with US President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts in the Netherlands. The leaders are expected to set new guidelines for defence spending.
In 2023, as Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine entered its second year, they agreed that all allies should spend at least 2% of GDP on their military budgets.
Estimates in the annual report showed that 22 allies had achieved this goal last year, compared with a previous prediction of 23.
Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain did not meet the target.
The United States is now estimated to have spent 3.19% of GDP in 2024, down from 3.68% a decade ago when all NATO members pledged to increase defense spending after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
While it is the only ally to have lower spending as a percentage of GDP than in 2014, the US still spends more in dollar terms than the others combined.
The report estimated that NATO's total military spending last year reached around 1.1 trillion euros.
To show how dominant the United States is within NATO, Hegseth told the Europeans and Canada in February that Ukraine would not take all of its territory back from Russia and would not join their military alliance.
"NATO's support for Ukraine remained strong in 2024," Rutte wrote in the report, even as doubts surround the Trump administration's commitment to Kiev as ceasefire talks stall. "Looking to the future, NATO allies are united in their desire for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine," Rutte wrote.
This was a subdued assessment of support compared to that of his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg just a year earlier.
"Ukraine must prevail as an independent and sovereign nation. Supporting Ukraine is not charity, it is in our security interest," Stoltenberg wrote in his latest annual report.
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