U.S. President Donald Trump increased already high tensions in NATO on Thursday by suggesting that Spain be expelled from the military alliance because it has not started spending 5% of GDP on defense. In a press availability at the White House alongside Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Trump called Spain “a laggard” and said, “They have no excuse. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO, frankly.”
The 5% target was set by partners at a NATO summit last June and consists of a 3.5% requirement for core military spending, plus 1.5% for other security spending. Every NATO member agreed to satisfy the 5% target set in June, except for Spain, which has stated it currently spends 1.2% on defense reporting by NATO. Spain committed to increasing spending to 2.1%, which is still below the 5% required target.
Trump expressed admiration for Finland’s rapid scaling of defense expenditures after Russia’s assault on Ukraine while condemning Spain for not taking the same measures in concert with other allies. These comments mark a growing commitment by Washington to a harder line on burden sharing, of which Spain’s comments are the latest reminder in a decades-long point of friction within the alliance. To threaten to revoke Spain’s membership, while it has never happened before, highlights the level of U.S. pressure that is transforming NATO from a conventional alliance that projects things like European security to an alliance that expects its members to pay according to the rising geopolitical threat environment.
Spain’s defense shortfall may now be a focal point of politics as it relates to NATO unity and a willingness for Europeans to go along with increasing their own defense spending to respond to heightened European security for the alliance demands conceived by the U.S., represented in the recent comments from Trump. This development raises some questions about how far Trump’s administration may go in equating commitments by members for funding commitments to continued membership in the 32-member alliance.
