Intended to avoid conflict

NATO chief wants to buy even more missiles from Trump

Rutte made representations to Trump at the end of 2024.

(Bild: AFP/NATO)

NATO chief Mark Rutte wants to persuade US President-elect Donald Trump to give European partners easier access to weapons systems from the American arms industry. The arms deal is intended to avoid new disputes ...

The spending of European allies in the USA already amounts to hundreds of billions of dollars, said Rutte. But it could be much more "if the US defence industry were liberalized and more open and you didn't have to get approval from Congress, the Pentagon and the White House".

As an example of the enormous potential, Rutte cited the demand from European partners for Patriot missile defense systems. "They cost two billion each. That is an enormous amount of money for the USA and for the US economy," said Rutte. It currently takes an enormous amount of time to bring Patriot systems to Europe.

Is Rutte's calculation working?
The background to Rutte's plans is, among other things, his expectation that Trump as US President will exert new pressure on European allies with comparatively low defense spending. In the Republican's view, the European partners do far too little for defense and rely too much on the protection of the USA. In his first term of office from 2017 to 2021, Trump even threatened to withdraw from NATO over this.

Most recently, Trump called on Tuesday for the allies to spend five percent of their gross domestic product on defense in the future. For many countries, this would mean that they would have to more than double their defense spending. Rutte was expected to make statements on this on Thursday. Trump is also straining relations with alliance partners with his fantasies of taking over Canada and Greenland.

New regulation could avoid disputes
In principle, a liberalization of the US defence market could make it easier for the countries affected to invest more money and at the same time allow Trump to claim to his voters that he has strengthened US industry.

It is also possible that easing restrictions on the US defense industry will reduce the risk of political disputes over the purchase of weapons systems from non-NATO countries. For example, there had recently been years of trouble because Turkey had purchased the S-400 missile defense system from Russia. One of the reasons given by the government in Ankara was that it had long tried unsuccessfully to purchase the US Patriot system.

NATO Secretary General Rutte has recently emphasized several times that he also considers higher defence spending by Europeans to be necessary. Overall, the European allies are now investing more than two percent of their gross domestic product in defense, he argues. In four to five years, however, there will be a problem with deterrence against Russia if more is not spent.