(Seoul = News 1) Reporter Kim Kyung-min = U.S. President Donald Trump has reorganized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into a business that he can handle more comfortably, political media Politico reported on the 5th (local time).
According to Politico, President Trump has been pushing NATO member states to significantly increase defense spending while leading them to invest heavily in purchasing U.S. weapons to support Ukraine.
At the NATO summit in Ankara, the capital of Turkiye, from the 7th to the 8th, President Trump is expected to refocus on how much NATO countries can spend on purchasing U.S. weapons.
President Trump's transactional approach is likely to neglect discussions about expanding NATO membership or how to defend NATO's eastern front line against Russia.
"Europe has no choice but to rely on the United States for the time being," a European diplomat said. "So we don't have to fight."
However, he stressed, "Europe should not be taken for granted," adding, "We must firmly convince the United States to clearly know that we also have our own national interests."
U.S. Ambassador Matthew Whitaker said ahead of the NATO summit that the U.S. government "welcomes European efforts to increase defense production and ease regulations."
"But we never support the protectionist stance that is often included in many defense industry plans in Europe," he said, adding, "This is an area that can be discussed at this summit, and we look forward to reaching an agreement on this."
Ambassador Whitaker called it a "good start" for the allies to spend about $120 billion (about 183 trillion won) in defense spending over the past year, half of which was spent on purchasing U.S. equipment.
The amount of defense expenditure is much higher than the $90 billion (about 137 trillion won) that the allies boasted about additional investments at the summit last year.
The move comes after President Trump pressured him to risk losing U.S. support unless he increases defense spending from 2% to 5% of GDP.
President Trump is constantly threatening to leave NATO if he fails to deliver on the defense spending increase. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth linked the increase in defense spending to faster sales of American weapons to allies.
President Trump's business methods were quite consistent at the six NATO summits held during his two terms, the media reported.
In this term, Trump's stance on Trump's proposal to buy Greenland or hesitancy in U.S. support for Ukraine, imposing tough tariffs on NATO members, and viewing NATO as a "means of making money" is becoming clearer.
Europe is currently in line with President Trump's strategy.
NATO member states are feeling pressure as President Trump announced the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Germany and canceled the dispatch of troops to Poland. This is because in Europe, anxiety is rising due to the war in Ukraine and Russia's expansion into the eastern front of NATO.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutter, who visited Washington last month, said European investment is creating 110,000 US jobs through US arms orders worth 300 billion dollars. In addition, just days before the summit, Britain and Germany announced plans to produce US weapons under their licenses.
Another European diplomat said, "The secretary-general wants to make the summit a 'deal-making event' where companies announce their cooperation plans. If President Trump sees the defense industry event positively, he is likely to think positively about the Ankara summit and NATO as a whole."
The Trump administration has made its commitment to reshape the NATO alliance more clear in recent weeks. At a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels last month, Hegseth criticized Europe's political culture and warned that the U.S. was reviewing the scale of its presence on the continent.
NATO should "return to a true hard-line military alliance" and "an alliance with substantial military capabilities to exercise deterrence on the European continent and lead Europe's conventional defense."
Reporter Kim Kyung-min ([email protected] )
"The arms trade show goes on.
NATO may be used as a justification for coercion.
Whatever the intent, Europe seems unable to escape this for the time being.