The newest line of disputes between Trump and NATO- EXPLAINED

The European NATO allies could not step up the defense expenditure and that is what led the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, to threaten to take back his support to NATO. The former President expressed that he would support Russia to do everything it wished. On this, the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg said, "Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S.”

The issue

Former President of the United States, Mr. Donald Trump had cautioned the trans-Atlantic members of NATO to enhance their defense expenditure several times. At the time of his presidential term as well, the former president stressed reducing help to NATO. Additionally, a potential of a "tiered alliance" was also proposed. The tiered alliance intends to change Article 3, which urges the NATO members to make important attempts to enhance defense capabilities along with Article 5, which calls an attack against one member of the NATO as an attack against all the members. Such a change would imply that only the ones meeting the threshold of the set defense can be entitled to avail what Article 5 offers.

Now, it is important to note that the 2024 budget required direct funding of €3.8 billion, and it has been successfully fulfilled by the NATO members in order to continue the military and operation commands. However, what still remains a matter of concern is the issue of equal contribution to indirect funding. One of the major contributors of indirect funding is the United States. The US is the contributor of 68 percent of the total indirect funding.

The response by NATO

It has been claimed by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg that NATO is actually stronger than Russia. Mr. Stoltenberg quoted the defense expenditure report of NATO of July 2023 and compared the arsenal capacity of Russia and NATO while claiming this at the Munich Security Conference of 2024. At present, NATO holds military personnel that overpowers that of Russia. However, it is also important to note that Russia actually overpowers NATO in nuclear warheads.

It was in the year 1949 when NATO was formed and since then, the United States has been the largest contributor to NATO. In the year 2006, 2 percent of the GDP target was introduced, However, after the very first invasion of Russia into the territory of Ukraine in the year 2014, the NATO members actually began increasing the expenditures. However, from the year 2006 to the year 2014, all the members of NATO showed a decline in their shares, except Poland, Norway, and Estonia.

Talking about the current scenario, the European members of NATO have promised a total of $380 billion in the present year along with spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Moreover, other members like Finland and Germany have also assured to increase their military expenditure.