Trump’s uphill battle to make NATO allies hit his mega defense spending target – POLITICO

NATO split

Trump’s demand is splitting the alliance’s European nations into three groupings, said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary-general who’s now a distinguished policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

A “relatively small group” that includes the Baltic nations and Poland is already spending nearly 5 percent of GDP on defense to deter Russian leader Vladimir Putin and is ready to “pay the price” to keep Trump onside, Grand said.

According to Giedrimas Jeglinskas, another former NATO assistant secretary-general who now heads the Lithuanian parliament’s Committee on National Security and Defense, the 5 percent figure is not “that wild.”

“In the eastern frontier of NATO, I think that makes sense,” he said.

A second group encompasses countries such as the Nordic nations and the U.K.

Their defense budgets are already above 2 percent of GDP and they are “willing to look at targets of 2.5, 3 or even 3.5 percent, because it’s consistent with their analysis of the geopolitical situation,” said Grand. However, he added, “they are not going to blindly say yes to 5 percent.”