US requires NATO to spend 5% on defense

"We need something other than the promise made at the 2014 Wales summit, where everyone agreed that 2 percent of GDP would be spent on defense. We need clear incremental steps to achieve these goals, and at the same time we need to make sure that all of our allies understand that it has to be about hard defense capabilities first," said U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been pressuring NATO as far back as his first inaugural cadence, pushing the alliance to spend more on defense. Earlier this month, Whitaker warned the bloc that Trump would not attend the NATO summit in June unless the bloc formally commits to increasing defense spending, Bloomberg reported.

NATO leaders will sign off on a new spending target at the upcoming summit. It will include a proposal to allocate 3.5 percent of GDP to core defense and 1.5 percent to defense-related areas by 2032.

Shaky prospects for ending the war in Ukraine are prompting European countries to build up their military capabilities.

Days after Trump's phone call with Putin, which resulted in no concrete progress toward peace, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that his country was on track to increase its defense budget.

Other NATO members have begun to estimate how much they will have to spend, with the Netherlands predicting it will need $21.4 billion a year to reach the higher defense spending target.

Photo: nato.int.