Rutte Calls for Higher Defense Spending: NATO Needs “More Britain and More Europe”

NATO needs “more United Kingdom and more Europe” to confront the most dangerous security environment the West has faced in a generation, the secretary general of the 32-nation military alliance said this afternoon during a visit to the United Kingdom.

Mark Rutte praised Britain for its pledge to raise defense spending in line with U.S. demands after a meeting with Prime Minister Andy Burnham, but argued that military and financial efforts must continue into the future.

“It is essential that your armed forces continue to provide the strong power NATO needs,” Rutte said in a speech before a specialist audience at Ditchley Park, a wartime retreat used by Winston Churchill in Oxfordshire.

It was a call for the United Kingdom to make progress toward an alliance-wide target, demanded by Donald Trump, of spending 3.5% of GDP by 2035, around £30 billion in real terms, money that must be found from additional taxes, borrowing or cuts to other spending.

Britain has so far planned only to raise defense spending to 2.7% of GDP by the end of the next decade. Short-term financial pressures have led the military to be told to halt non-essential training until the end of the year.

Chancellor John Healey resigned as defense secretary from Keir Starmer’s government in June because the former prime minister would not commit to 3% by 2030, arguing it would require too large an increase in the coming decade.

But Healey refused to recommit to the interim target when he was appointed to the Treasury by Burnham a month later, raising doubts that the new government was delaying spending increases until after the next election.

Rutte said he had discussed Britain’s “commitments” to NATO when he met Burnham at a science business park in Oxford earlier on Wednesday, offering no details, in the first face-to-face meeting between the two.

Before that meeting, Burnham acknowledged he had replaced Starmer but insisted there had “never been any change in the United Kingdom’s unwavering commitment to NATO and our NATO obligations.”

The NATO chief, a former Dutch prime minister, said many in Europe had made the “casual assumption” that the United States would “always provide the bulk of the force and cover the bill, whatever happens” until Trump returned to the White House.

Instead, he noted that during a summit in The Hague in 2025, the United Kingdom and other alliance members had agreed to raise their defense spending to match U.S. levels, in response to Trump’s demand that Europe take the lead in defending the continent.

“We need more United Kingdom and more Europe in the alliance,” Rutte said, because NATO “faces the most dangerous and complex security environment in a generation” with a return of wars in Europe and the Middle East, and wider geopolitical uncertainty.

Citing “Russia and its war against Ukraine, terrorism, Iran and the tectonic shifts of global geopolitical competition,” Rutte argued the United Kingdom and Europe had to invest more, because otherwise “our collective defense will not be credible.”

Britain, he said, had “a central role in building this stronger Europe in a stronger NATO” and noted that the United Kingdom was spending billions to upgrade the Trident nuclear deterrent, which is pledged to the defense of NATO members.

The United Kingdom is also gradually upgrading its conventional forces, although overall British defense spending, the second largest in the alliance, is now behind Germany’s. By 2029, Berlin’s military budgets are on track to double those of the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom was “leading the pushback” against a Russian campaign of provocation and sabotage across Europe, Rutte said, and the United Kingdom had been “a good friend to Ukraine.” Britain spends £3 billion a year supporting Ukraine with weapons.

Meanwhile, Canada, seeking to diversify its defense ties away from the U.S., has formally applied to join the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force military coalition, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office said on Wednesday.

Canada, already a NATO member, is seeking closer military cooperation with Europe.

The JEF includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom.