Price problems overshadow the olive.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived with a message of comfort and firm instructions for NATO foreign ministers when they met at the headquarters of the Alliance in Brussels on Thursday: we are there to stay, now double your collective defense expenses.

“The United States is also active in NATO and never,” Rubio told journalists, next to the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, at the start of the two-day meeting. “President Trump clearly said that he supported NATO. We are going to stay in NATO.”

If Donald Trump’s support at NATO had been clearly understood in Europe in recent months, it was not easy. Since he took office for the second time in January, he has repeatedly suggested that the United States could refuse to come to the help of allies who have not achieved NATO defense spending objectives if they were attacked, undergoing the mutual defense pact which is a basic NATO principle.

The American president also amazed the Europeans with his desire to annex Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory which is part of Denmark, and by opening bilateral talks with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine, largely away from other NATO members who, like Washington, smoked hundreds of billions of dollars in kyiv.

But Rubio, who himself ran for the American presidency in 2016 as a traditional conservative candidate, suggested that there had been misunderstandings.

“Part of this hysteria and this hyperbola that I see in the world media and certain national media in the United States about NATO are not justified,” said US Secretary of State.

Rubio and Rutte stressed the NATO unit despite the tensions

Rutte, who took the post of NATO chief in 2024, also underlined the transatlantic link.

“We know that the United States is a faithful ally in NATO,” he said. “But this commitment expects an expectation, and the expectation is that European allies and Canada must spend more.”

The former Dutch Prime Minister said that Canada and European Allies have increased their defense expenses by 700 billion euros since 2017. In a likely attempt to appease the United States, Rutte stressed that NATO allies should all aim to spend “3%” of their gross domestic product (PGB) for the defense.

Russia which is now strongly militarized by war at the NATO door in Ukraine, but also the increasingly unpredictable behavior of the United States under the Trump administration, has sent Europe to a wave of defense spending in recent months.

“The Russian threat will be there for many years to come,” said Rutte on Thursday.

Long before Trump, the United States had urged all NATO allies to achieve the agreed objective of spending 2% of their GDP in defense. Most NATO countries now do it, with average expenses in 2024 to 2.7%.

Rubio recalled the new goal of the Trump administration on Thursday.

“We want to leave here the understanding that we are on a path, a realistic path, to each of the members who engage and held a promise to reach up to 5%,” he said.

This also included the United States, he said, which currently spends 3.5%.

Bombs praise the message of good will

Rubio Task of making your NATO member colleagues comfortable was made even more difficult on Wednesday when Trump announced prices that a lot of fear could launch the world trade war. A 10% -Levy now applies to almost all goods imported into the United States. The goods of the European Union, which include 23 of the 31 NATO member states, face prices of 20%.

Arriving on Thursday at talks, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noel Barrot, acknowledged that the transatlantic unit was “tested by the decisions taken and announced yesterday by President Trump”.

The outgoing German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, said that economic security was “part of all of security as a whole”.

Nevertheless, the ministers of various countries stressed that they still considered the United States as an ally.

NATO is struggling with large questions

In general, NATO European allies are preparing for American disengagement while it pivots Asia; The Trump administration is seriously concerned about China.

A scenario worrying about Europe is that the United States could reduce some of the approximately 100,000 soldiers it has applied in Europe at present, a certain number which has been stimulated by 20,000 sous the former American president Joe Biden after Russia launched its large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Asked about the possibility, Rutte said that the problem was not new and that there were “no plans for them all of a sudden, attracting their presence here in Europe”.

But as he examines a NATO summit in the Dutch city of The Hague in June, the main concern of the 75 -year -old alliance will certainly be the war in Ukraine, Trump a merchant always with Moscow and with kyiv, but without having concluded a lasting peace agreement. In the long term, the United States wants Europe to take responsibility for Ukraine’s security.

Was Rubio’s message convincing?

For the loss of Rafael of the European Council on foreign relations, it is unlikely that Rubio put allies at ease in the light of recent noises that come out of the United States.

“Europeans do not find this particularly reassuring, especially after the announcement of the rate of (Wednesday), now that we are in a trade war with the United States,” he told DW.

The prospect of any NATO member spent 5% of their GDP in defense is unlikely.

“For this, you actually need a command economy like that of Russia. During the Cold War, some NATO allies spent 5% or more for the defense, but it was an exception, most of the time, it was more than 3%,” he said.

Russia should spend more than 6% of its GDP in defense in 2025.

In the coming months, Europeans will examine exactly what they need to spend.

“Europeans know that they must do more different ways to go to the top of NATO,” said the loss. “This is his capacities and the list of races means spending.”

Published by: Carla Bleiker