Donald Trump’s US election victory will cause alarm among the alliance’s European members on issues from defence spending to support for Ukraine.
Copyright Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Copyright 2018 The AP. All rights reserved
As European leaders and lawmakers reckoned on Wednesday morning with Donald Trump’s remarkable victory in the US presidential election, one of the main concerns across the continent will be how his administration deals with NATO.
Several EU heads of state were quick to congratulate Trump and express a willingness to work with him, but stressed that they would protect Europe’s interests. In the build-up to the US election, several European policymakers had said they were concerned about what a Trump victory could mean for issues from aid to Ukraine to the future of NATO.
Trump has repeatedly criticised the alliance and complained that the US contributes too much to its budget while EU members spend too little on defence. During his election campaign, he said the US would only defend NATO members from a future attack by Russia if they met their spending obligations on defence.
The alliance’s chief Mark Rutte, who met with Trump several times during his 14-year tenure as the Netherlands’ prime minister, praised the US president-elect in a post on X on Wednesday morning while also emphasising the importance of NATO.
In a longer statement, Rutte referred to the multiple challenges facing the alliance but did not specifically mention Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“We face a growing number of challenges globally, from a more aggressive Russia, to terrorism, to strategic competition with China, as well the increasing alignment of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran,” he said.
Rutte also said that Trump would be welcomed by a “stronger, larger and more united alliance” and emphasised an uptick in defence spending and production among its members.
NATO estimates that 23 of its 32 members will meet its target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defence this year, up from just three nations a decade ago. This is partly due to pressure on the alliance from Trump during his previous presidency but mainly down to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, officials and analysts have said previously.
While Rutte has to walk a political tightrope with Trump heading back to the White House, others in Europe do not have to be so diplomatic when expressing their views.
Marko Mihkelson, chair of the Estonian parliamentary foreign affairs committee, warned in a post on X on Wednesday that Europe must be “ready to fight for yourself and your friends.”
“Regardless of the fact that the next president of the US is most probably Donald Trump, Europe must do everything to preserve the transatlantic alliance. NATO’s toughest years lie ahead,” wrote Mihkelson, who is also head of the Estonian delegation to NATO.
Political analysts say that pragmatism will be key to dealing with Trump on NATO.
Fortunately for Europe, Rutte is known as “Teflon Mark” in the Netherlands due to his flexibility, cunning, guile and nose for political opportunism. He is said to have handled Trump well in their previous meetings, and be held in relatively good regard by the US President-elect.
At a 2018 NATO summit, where Trump hinted that the US could leave the alliance, then-Dutch PM Rutte praised the US president for having pushed Europe to spend more on defence during his tenure, even though that was not true, according to Dick Zandee, head of the security and defence programme of The Hague-based Clingendael Institute.
“But (Rutte) gave all the credit to Trump, and then Trump was flattered. Since then, Rutte got a very good entry ticket into the White House under Trump,” Zandee told Euronews in a recent interview.
Traditional Russian wooden dolls, called Matryoshka, depicting Republican presidential nominee an former US President Donald Trump, right, and Russian President Vladimir PutinDmitri Lovetsky/Copyright 2024 The AP. All rights reserved
Money matters
The US is by some distance the biggest funder of NATO, and will spend about $968 billion (€900bn) on defence in 2024, according to the latest estimates from the alliance.
Yet the US is facing a debt crisis, which is raising questions about how the government will maintain or increase defence spending with interest on federal debt at a record high and Trump’s spending and tax plans only likely to see this growing burden worsen.
European members are upping the ante — relatively speaking — with Germany this year hitting the 2% GDP spending target for the first time since the end of the Cold War, and France also doing so. Many countries bordering Ukraine and Russia have increased their spending in light of the conflict, such as Estonia, Finland, Romania, Hungary and Poland.
Notably, Poland has doubled its defence expenditure to more than 4% of GDP over the last decade, and the government has vowed to raise that proportion to 5% next year, which would make it the biggest contributor to the alliance by share of economic output.
On Tuesday, Rutte visited Italy where he met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and President Sergio Mattarella to discuss defence and support for Ukraine.
While the NATO chief reminded the Italian PM of the importance of the 2% spending target — Italy is on track to spend 1.49% of GDP on defence this year, down from 1.5% in 2023 — Meloni called for European countries to take on a bigger role in the alliance.
“As you all know, we think it is necessary that next to the North American pillar of the alliance there should be a European pillar,” Meloni said. This is seen as having a dual purpose: it could serve to appease Washington by demonstrating greater commitment and efficiency from EU members, and bolster the continent’s ability to defend itself in case the US did decide to shake up or ultimately quit the alliance.
President Donald Trump, left, welcomes Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, right, to the West Wing of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)Susan Walsh/Copyright 2018 The AP. All rights reserved.
Concerns over Ukraine
Fittingly, Italy will in 2025 host the next conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine. Since taking up his post a few months ago, Rutte has strived to drum up Western backing for the war of aggression-hit country. The alliance is on track to provide Ukraine with €40bn this year, he said, and has reportedly agreed to maintain that level of funding in 2025.
This could prove significant given that Trump has criticised the level of US support for Kyiv, with Biden’s administration having given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid.
Trump’s promise that he could end the conflict before taking office — without any further explanation — has caused alarm about what this could mean for Ukraine’s war effort, particularly given his repeated criticism of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and previous praise for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The value of arms supplied to Ukraine would fall to €34bn from a projected €59bn if US assistance to Kyiv was totally shelved, found research by Germany’s Kiel University.
Earlier this year, NATO allies decided to take on a bigger role in coordinating the supply of weapons to Ukraine, taking over from the US to protect the process amid concerns about what a Trump presidency could mean for the effort.
Add to the mix an increasingly nationalist and protectionist Trump and Republican party, which some analysts have even described as isolationist, and there are growing fears about what this could entail when it comes to the US stance on NATO and global security.
French former foreign minister and scholar Hubert Védrine described the US as having an “Olympian off-handedness”. Its attitude, he said, has been: “We’ve won. Our values are going to be imposed everywhere, with sermons, sanctions, bombings and so on.”
