NATO allies will meet in The Hague next week and are expected to agree to significantly boost military expenditure, but Madrid is reluctant.
Spain wants a carve-out from NATO’s likely future defense spending goal of 5 percent of GDP, the country’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said ahead of next week’s high-stakes alliance summit in The Hague.
“Spain will continue to fulfil its duty in the years and decades ahead and will continue to actively contribute to the European security architecture. However, Spain cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP at this summit,” Sánchez told NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in a letter seen by POLITICO.
Spain has the lowest military spending of any NATO member, allocating just 1.3 percent of its GDP to defense in 2024. Sánchez said earlier this year that Russia didn’t pose an immediate security threat to Spain.
(hey Portugal, this is your chance, take what you want)
Hehe they already got the good part
What chicken shit reasoning they’re using here.
“It doesn’t impact us”. The most shortsighted, idiotic reason possible.
Isn’t that the same reasoning that allowed Hitler to take so much land at the beginning of the war?
And the same reason that allowed Putin to take so much land too. Appeasement and the “I don’t care what happens in 10 years” mentality. People are ultimately shortsighted and having a detterrent isn’t popular when it is working (i.e. why do we need to spend so much, there wasn’t a war)
They don’t need a reason, really. 5% of GDP is moronic, the number alone is reason enough to pass. Not 5% of the national budget. 5% of GDP. Insane.
Isn’t the current requirement 2%? They want to more than double their budget?
Another PIGS big L.
Spain? Read the room.
Huge disappointment from Spain
Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union. I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically. They’ve proven time and time again they want to go it alone. They want to be bosses of the world and everyone to answer to them. Fuck them.
Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union.
“Return”? It was never really there.
I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically.
The 5% are not a membership fee that goes to the US. What the US most often got out of NATO was that they defined the standards and requirements, which at some point required American IP and American products to fulfill those. But in the end, the leverage they had was their huge investment in NATO that also benefited other nations; once the American investments end, other nations will fill that void (hopefully).
Restricting such an alliance to the EU would rule out members like Canada, for example
deleted by creator
