NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte says Europe is not capable of defending itself without U.S. military support and would need to more than double military spending to be able to do so.
If anyone thinks here … that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the U.S., keep on dreaming. You can’t,” Rutte told EU lawmakers in Brussels on Monday. Europe and the United States “need each other,” he said.
Tensions have risen within NATO over U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which a territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Trump also said that he was slapping new tariffs on European countries that backed Greenland, but then dropped his threats after a “framework” for a deal over the island was reached, with Rutte’s help.
Rutte said that EU countries would have to double defense spending from the 5% NATO target agreed last year to 10% and spend “billions and billions” on building nuclear arms. “You would lose the ultimate guarantor of our freedom, which is the US nuclear umbrella,” the former Dutch prime minister said. “So hey, good luck.”
The NATO head reiterated his repeated praise for Trump for pressuring reluctant European allies to step up defense spending. He also appeared to brush off a suggestion floated by the EU’s defense commissioner Andrius Kubilius earlier this month for a possible European defense force that could replace US troops on the continent. “It will make things more complicated. I think Putin will love it. So think again,” Rutte said.
On Greenland, Rutte said he had agreed with Trump that NATO would “take more responsibility for the defense of the Arctic”, but it was up to Greenlandic and Danish authorities to negotiate over US presence on the island. “I have no mandate to negotiate on behalf of Denmark, so I didn’t, and I will not,” he said.
