Europe and Canada say they will spend more in defense, but are cool for American requests

Brussels (AP) – The European NATO allies and Canada declared on Friday that they were ready to accelerate defense spending, but are cool for American requests for the size of their military budgets, in particular given the arrangement of US President Donald Trump get closer to the Russian chief Vladimir Putin.

We, the allies, have expendable billions Dollars more in defense since Putin ordered a large -scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, but almost a third of them still do not reach the objective of NATO of at least 2% of their gross domestic product.

Trump said the American allies should commit to spending at least 5%, but this would require investments on an unprecedented scale. According to NATO figures, the United States had spent 3.38% last year, the only ally whose expenses have dropped in the last decade.

“It is important that we all agree that Russia is a threat. Otherwise, I do not know why we should always increase the increasingly defense expenses,” the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs told Mélanie Joly, to journalists at the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

NATO leaders said at a summit last year that Russia “remains the most important and direct threat to the security of allies.”

Putine’s public rehabilitation of Trump, who had become an international pariah charged for war crimes, disturbed the American allies and believe that the decision of eliminate Membership of NATO for Ukraine weakened kyiv’s hand at the negotiating table before the peace talks even started.

Beyond that, Europe and Canada were alarmed last month when the United States separated with European allies by refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in votes in three United Nations resolutions for the end of war.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Washington does not insist that his allies have achieved the 5% out-of-day spending objective, but “we believe that NATO allies must spend so that NATO faces the threats that itself has identified and articulated.”

Rubio said additional expenses are needed to strengthen military capacities.

“We are also involved in NATO today as we have ever been, and we intend to continue to be. But that must be a real alliance. And that means that our alliance partners must increase their own capacities,” he said.

When asked if the United States would also correspond to the 5%target, Rubio said: “Of course. We are heading now.”

France has set itself for an “objective of 3% to 3.5%, and we are preparing to reach 3% to 3.5%, which concerns the level of American defense spending,” said French Foreign Minister Jean-No Noël Barrot. France was estimated at 2.06% last year.

He said that new funds should be spent on European equipment rather than American. In recent years, European allies have placed around two thirds of their equipment orders with American defense companies.

Even if the Trump administration requires that defense expenses be increased, the president pricing war is taking a tour of the stock markets and is expected to harm the economic growth of the world, including among the American allies of NATO.

Article 2 of the Founding Treaty of NATO declares that the Allies “will seek to eliminate conflicts in their international economic policies and will encourage economic collaboration between all or part.”

When asked if the prices constitute a violation of the Treaty, the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, said: “No, I do not think. We have seen in the past many examples of views of sight, fighting on prices. This has happened before without being in violation of article 2.”

Pressed how the allies could predict their security, if they no longer have a budgetary space, Rutte said: “I do not think I help this alliance by commenting on something that is not really part of the policy of the Alliance, and it is to ensure that we can defend ourselves.”

Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said that NATO members were working on setting a new spending goal, which will be announced at the next summit in June.

But he said that “5% is of course much more than the United States itself and it is a very high ambition and we are not ready to engage in a number at the moment. Just as it is important to spend more, it is also important to spend more intelligently. ”