Brussels – NATO foreign ministers meeting in Antalya from Wednesday will look to forge a compromise deal on ramping up defence spending as allies scramble to satisfy US President Donald Trump’s demand to agree to five percent of GDP at a summit next month.
The two-day gathering in the sun-baked Turkish seaside resort comes as diplomatic intrigue swirls over a possible meeting across the country in Istanbul between Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
But it will be the internal wrangling over NATO’s spending target that dominates the meat of the debate Thursday among foreign ministers with just over six weeks before leaders come face-to-face with Trump in The Hague. Trump has piled on pressure ahead of the summit by insisting he wants NATO to agree to devote five percent of GDP to defence — a level no member, including the United States, currently reaches. The volatile former reality TV star has rattled European allies worried about the menace from Russia by threatening not to protect countries that, in his eyes, don’t spend enough. In a bid to prevent him blowing up the alliance, NATO boss Mark Rutte has floated a proposal for allies to commit to 3.5 percent of direct military spending by 2032, as well as another 1.5 percent of broader security-related expenditure. That would hand Trump the headline figure he’s demanding while giving enough wiggle room to European allies who are struggling just to reach NATO’s current spending threshold of two percent. “Trump will be able claim victory and say that he got NATO to spend five percent,” one senior NATO diplomat, talking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “In reality it will be more complicated than that — but that will be the essential political message from the summit.”
