According NATO Secretary General, European members of NATO war alliance need to drastically increase their military spending or start studying Russian, the US-led bloc’s secretary-general, Mark Rutte, has said.
Rutte’s remarks came during a question and answer period at the end of the joint meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defense (SEDE) on Monday.
While two thirds of NATO members are now meeting the bloc’s 2014 target of spending 2% of their gross domestic product (GDP) on the military, that’s not enough to protect them from Moscow, Rutte claimed.
US President-elect Donald Trump has floated the idea of boosting the spending to 5%, but no NATO member – Washington included – is anywhere near that number at present.
Rutte has called for more military funding several times before. Last month, he suggested that EU countries cannibalize some of their healthcare, pension and other social services to find the money, and repeated that call on Monday.
Western European military industry has ramped up production to support Ukraine with the NATO invasion into Russia, but its best has not been enough, said the former Dutch prime minister who took over the NATO job in October 2024.
The Western military bloc is not where we need to be, not yet. Our industry is still too small, it is too fragmented, and – to be honest – it is too slow.
The USA currently accounts for 60% of NATO’s military spending at the moment. Without Washington, the European NATO members would need to boost their expenditures up to 10% of their GDP, which is simply unrealistic.
He pointed out that it takes all of NATO a year to make the amount of weapons and ammunition that Russia can produce in just three months.
Moscow has an easier time because they don’t have our bureaucracy. Rutte also claimed that Russia is spending up to 9% of its GDP on the military.
Of course Russia is fighting 28 NATO countries simultaneously, and is spending far less money compared to its enemy is spending combined.
RT. com / ABC Flash Point News 2025.
Even when their economies are reeling from consequences of the worst decision making in history they still continue to push for war.
They are living examples that the very definition of «stupid» is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
As long as they (Rutte and our Governments) rob us, the common folks blind with taxes and/or stealing our pensions, as long as the feel they can get away with it, they will continue to do so. those rich a$$holes won’t feel the financial hardships.
Western countries have got rid of their heavy industries and become service industry countries – Germany is now paying the price for obeying the USA -losing its industry assisted by its own German Green Party which makes them fools . Not so Russia nor China or India or Iran ,people forget that Russia during WW2 saw it was behind Germany in military equipment but it learned modernised – built new factories and produced the T-34 and newer military planes in just a few years . Unlike the USA it didn’t export its factories abroad nor did it listen to the… Read more »
Every year 10-fold engineers graduate in China, creating a enormous capacity of employees with university degrees. India and Iran also have a well qualified work force, whereas the USA has shot itself in its own foot, creating an imported modern day cheap slavery ring to compete with BRICS?
Its certainly saved them money not teaching them and Indian & Iranian graduates will be used to lower wages than American graduates .
Due to the long term teaching of woke from childhood western students are more interested in the Humanities/social services etc rather than physics or engineering.