Rutte went on to insist that the EU allow Ukraine to spend part of the bloc’s upcoming \u20ac90 billion loan to Kyiv on weapons from the United States, despite a push by some member countries like France to spend the money on the bloc’s own military suppliers.<\/p>\n
The comments form part of a broader pattern in which Rutte has insisted that Europe has to keep channels open to the United States, and that the U.S. president remains loyal to the alliance. Washington still has a \u201ctotal commitment\u201d to the alliance’s collective defense, he said. \u201cThe U.S. needs NATO.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also credited Trump for getting all NATO countries to boost their defense spending to at least 2 percent of GDP as of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you really think that Spain and Italy and Belgium and Canada would have decided to move from 1.5 to 2 percent … without Trump. No way,\u201d Rutte said.<\/p>\n
Without the U.S., defending Europe would cost a fortune, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor Europe, if you really want to go it alone \u2026 forget that you can ever get there with 5 percent,\u201d Rutte said, referencing a pledge by NATO allies to ramp up their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. \u201cIt will be 10 percent,\u201d he argued, and cost \u201cbillions and billions of euros\u201d to replace America\u2019s nuclear deterrent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rutte went on to insist that the EU allow Ukraine to spend part of the bloc’s upcoming \u20ac90…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":545682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11205,29062,69,155266,110815,156,8298,8955,8959,50,257,273,67,274,275,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-545681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-defense-budgets","9":"tag-denmark","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-eu-us-military-ties","12":"tag-european-defense","13":"tag-france","14":"tag-greenland","15":"tag-mark-rutte","16":"tag-nato","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-ukraine","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-vladimir-putin","22":"tag-war-in-ukraine","23":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115964384588341014","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}