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When the leaders of NATO’s 32 member states gathered in The Hague on Tuesday, the official agenda was ambitious: finalize a new European defense readiness plan, increase collective spending targets, and signal unity in the face of Russian revanchism. But the single most consequential fact of the summit was never on the printed program. It was the looming presence of Donald Trump—not in the room, but in the rhetoric, the corridors, and the calculations of every delegation.
The former and potentially future U.S. president’s inflammatory words have punctuated the image of unity here, as Frank Gardner, the BBC’s security correspondent, reported from the summit. Trump’s recent suggestion that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members failing to meet spending targets—a comment he made during a campaign rally in February 2024—still echoes across the alliance. It has forced European capitals to confront an uncomfortable question: If the United States, under a second Trump presidency, cannot be relied upon to honor Article 5, can Europe defend itself in time? The answer, at this summit, remains deeply uncertain.
The Summit’s Core Tension: Rhetoric vs. Reality
The Hague summit was intended to be a showcase of resolve. NATO’s new Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg’s successor, had pushed for a commitment to raise defense spending from the current 2% of GDP benchmark to 2.5% by 2028, with a longer-term aspiration of 3%. But the real debate was not about the target—it was about the baseline. For years, NATO’s European members have struggled to meet even the original 2% threshold. Only 11 of 31 European allies hit that mark in 2024, according to NATO’s own estimates.
Trump’s shadow sharpens this tension. His belligerent posture on defense spending—first demonstrated during his 2017-2021 term—has forced European leaders to accelerate planning for a future where U.S. security guarantees might be conditional at best. Yet the gap between rhetoric and reality is vast. Germany, Europe’s largest economy, only reached the 2% target in 2024 for the first time in decades, and its current defense procurement pipeline is clogged with bureaucratic delays. France has long advocated for European strategic autonomy, but its defense industry is geared toward high-end systems that are expensive and slow to produce. Italy and Spain remain well below the threshold.
European Rearmament: Ambition Collides with Capacity
What makes the current moment genuinely different from previous NATO spending rows is the scope of the ambition. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has proposed a €100 billion European Defense Fund to jointly procure munitions, air defense systems, and battlefield enablers. The idea, first floated in early 2025, gained momentum after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine exposed the catastrophic state of European ammunition stockpiles. But the fund remains unfunded: member states are split on whether to issue common debt (as with the pandemic recovery fund) or rely on national contributions.
The more significant development here is structural. Europe’s defense industrial base is fragmented across national champions that duplicate capabilities and compete for limited contracts. A single M1 Abrams tank has more commonality across U.S. Army units than a dozen European main battle tanks have with each other. Standardization—of artillery shells, of logistics, of digital command systems—remains a distant dream. “We are trying to build a European pillar of NATO with tools that were designed for a world that no longer exists,” one senior German defense official said on condition of anonymity. “The bottleneck is not money alone. It is political will, industrial capacity, and a shared threat perception.”
Compounding the problem is demographic. European armies are shrinking as birth rates fall and young people show less interest in military service. France’s armed forces, for example, have roughly 200,000 active personnel—a number that has been stable but is increasingly stretched by domestic security duties and overseas deployments. Even if budgets rise, the human capital required to operate and sustain modern equipment is scarce. The European Union’s population is aging faster than any other region, and defense firms report difficulty hiring engineers and technicians.
The Major Players: Competing Priorities Inside the Alliance
The NATO summit laid bare the divergent interests of the alliance’s key stakeholders. For the United States—represented in The Hague by President Joe Biden—the priority is maintaining leadership while pressuring allies to carry a fairer share. Biden’s team has quietly welcomed the rearmament push, but they are wary of anything that resembles a “European army” detached from NATO command. The Pentagon insists that any new European capabilities must be interoperable with U.S. forces.
For the Baltic states and Poland, the threat is existential. These frontline nations already spend above 2% (Poland is nearing 4%) and want NATO to commit to forward-deployed combat brigades, permanent, not rotational. They view Trump’s potential return with alarm and have begun bilateral defense agreements with each other as a hedge. In contrast, Southern European allies like Italy and Greece see the primary security threats as migration and energy security from North Africa, not Russian tanks crossing the Suwałki Gap. Their defense expenditures reflect those priorities: more navies and coast guards, fewer tanks and artillery.
France, ever the outlier, has used the summit to revive its push for “strategic autonomy”—a phrase that still makes Washington bristle. President Emmanuel Macron’s vision is a Europe capable of conducting high-intensity operations without U.S. enablers like intelligence, satellite communications, and air-to-air refueling. But even France’s most ardent supporters concede that such autonomy is a decade away, if not longer. Germany, caught between its historical pacifism and its new role as Europe’s leading military donor, is trying to balance support for NATO integration with a domestic electorate that is deeply wary of large defense bills.
Historical Precedent: From the Cold War to the Present
The current rearmament debate echoes earlier inflection points in the alliance’s history. During the Cold War, Europe’s defense spending averaged around 3-4% of GDP, but that was in an era of conscription, state-led industrial policy, and a clearly defined Soviet threat. The post-1991 peace dividend saw spending collapse: by the late 1990s, most European states were spending less than 1.5%. The 2014 Wales summit, which set the 2% target, was a direct response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, but compliance was slow until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
What makes today different is the combination of a revisionist Russia, a potentially disengaged America, and a Europe that has run down its defense apparatus for three decades. The historical precedent that most worries strategists is not the 1930s or the Cold War—it is the 1990s, when NATO expanded but failed to invest in the capabilities needed to defend its new members. That neglect is now coming due. The numbers tell the story: NATO’s European members combined have 1.5 million active personnel, but many units are understaffed and equipped with legacy systems. Europe’s defense industry, hamstrung by years of underinvestment, produces fewer artillery shells in a month than Russia fires in a day.
Global and Regional Implications: Beyond the Transatlantic Fissure
The implications of Europe’s rearmament struggle extend far beyond the borders of the alliance. In the Indo-Pacific, U.S. allies are watching closely: if Washington cannot guarantee Europe’s security, what does that mean for the defense of Taiwan or Japan? In Moscow, Kremlin propagandists have seized on Trump’s comments to argue that NATO is decaying from within, encouraging Russia to wait out Western resolve. In Beijing, planners see an opportunity: a divided NATO means less focus on Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea.
Regionally, the most immediate casualty could be the war in Ukraine. European states have supplied the bulk of financial and military aid to Kyiv since early 2024, when U.S. congressional gridlock temporarily halted American shipments. If European rearmament diverts resources away from Ukraine—as it already has, with some countries slowing deliveries of pledged weapons—the front lines could shift. The Europeans’ calculation is that they must rebuild their own deterrence before they can continue to arm Ukraine at current levels. But that calculation assumes time, which Ukraine does not have.
What Informed Observers Should Watch Next
The summit’s final communiqué, expected Wednesday, will likely paper over the deepest divisions. The real test will come in the months ahead. First, watch the German constitutional court’s ruling on the proposed €60 billion defense special fund—a legal challenge could derail Berlin’s plans. Second, monitor the U.S. presidential race: every speech Trump gives on foreign policy changes the assumptions European planners use.
More structurally, watch for the formation of small, flexible coalitions within NATO. The Joint Expeditionary Force (led by Britain) and the Franco-German “European Intervention Initiative” could become templates for a two-speed alliance: those able and willing to spend on defense, and those content to free-ride. The risk is that NATO survives but becomes hollow—an organization that exists on paper but lacks the credible deterrence that made it the most successful alliance in history. Europe’s rearmament is not just a financial challenge; it is a political and generational one. The summit in The Hague has made that painfully clear. The question, as Trump looms large, is whether the diagnosis will be followed by a cure.
Editorial Note: This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by the Celloraa editorial team for accuracy and clarity. It is intended for informational purposes only. Read our Editorial Policy.
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