NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte credited President-elect Donald Trump for increased defense spending across the alliance on Wednesday.
Rutte defended the president-elect during an interview on MSNBC where host Jonathan Lemire appeared to invite criticism of Trump over his relationship with NATO during his first term.
“In 2018, then-President Donald Trump, at a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels, came this close to pulling the United States out of that organization. He has repeatedly criticized NATO since then. How is the alliance preparing for his return?” Lemire asked.
Rutte said that Trump was right to be critical of the organization at that time.
“But, he was right in 2018 when he said that we had to spend more. And I think it is thanks to Donald Trump that NATO, if we could exclude for a second the U.S., is now at the 2% which was agreed in 2014,” Rutte said, referring to the agreement that all NATO countries spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.
“Not a lot happened between 2014 and when Donald Trump came on board in 2016 and 2017. Since then, we have massively, on the European side, increased our defense spending. So, this is thanks to Donald Trump,” he added.
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The secretary-general was clear that the 2% target should be considered a floor, however, and encouraged NATO countries to spend “much more.”
“We need to do more. We cannot stick at 2%. It has to be much more if, long-term, we want to keep deterrence against the Russians and others,” Rutte told Lemire.
The United Kingdom foreign minister, David Lammy, echoed Rutte’s comments in remarks at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday. Lammy was in Brussels to attend a meeting of foreign ministers of the alliance.
“I think Donald Trump is right to say that the 2% was set in some ways in less challenging times and all allies right across the family should be looking beyond that 2%,” Lammy said, according to Reuters.
The British foreign minister said that the U.K. had set its goal for defense spending well above the 2%-of-GDP benchmark.
“We’re going to 2.5%, but he’s right to challenge the alliance to come together and get beyond that,” Lammy said.