When NATO leaders met last week in The Hague, they strategically devoted their attention to obsequiously pleasing U.S. President Donald Trump. When the 24-hour summit concluded with an agreement among the allies to sharply raise their defense spending, as Trump has demanded for years, the outcome was almost universally attributed to Trump.
In reality, however, the man who deserves most of the credit is Russian President Vladimir Putin. More than Trump, it was Russia’s behavior that persuaded Europeans to sharply accelerate their defense spending spree.
There’s no denying that during his first term Trump insistently pressed the allies to boost their defense spending to the 2 percent of GDP target they had committed to back in 2014. More recently he began arguing that 5 percent of GDP was a more appropriate figure. Last week they agreed to increase military spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035, with an additional 1.5 percent for “military-adjacent” projects, like infrastructure and research.