The chief of NATO on Monday called on the alliance to make a “quantum leap in our collective defense,” committing to increases in military spending that far outstrip what Britain and most other members have yet pledged.
Speaking in London, Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general, laid bare the budget pressures that will face Britain and its European neighbors as they confront the aggression of Russia and the retrenchment of the United States.
Mr. Rutte, a former prime minister of the Netherlands, is pushing for members to commit to spending 5 percent of their gross domestic product on military and defense-related activities, a target promoted by President Trump, who complains that the alliance has long unfairly burdened the United States.
Mr. Rutte hopes to enshrine the new benchmark at a NATO summit meeting in The Hague on June 24 and 25. But he has yet to set a timeline for when members would be required to meet it — and the goal still seems elusive.
Britain has pledged to increase military spending to 2.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2027, paid for by diverting funds from overseas aid. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has set a goal of 3 percent within a decade, though he has refused to give a more specific date without knowing where the money will come from.
Ramping up to 5 percent, analysts say, would necessitate politically painful trade-offs for Britain, which is already dealing with straitened public finances. Britain currently spends 2.3 percent of its economic output on defense, more than France or Germany but less than the United States, at about 3.4 percent.
“It’s not up to me to decide how countries pay the bill,” Mr. Rutte said to an audience at Chatham House, a research organization in London. He said that Britain could opt not to meet the 5 percent target and, “you could still have the National Health Service” and other public services.
“But you better learn to speak Russian,” Mr. Rutte warned.
Without a more credible military deterrent, he said, Russia could mount an effective offensive against NATO in five years. Russia, Mr. Rutte noted, was producing ammunition at four times the rate of NATO, though its stockpiles are growing more slowly because it is using so much in its war on Ukraine.
Citing Russia’s devastating air attacks on Kyiv and other cities, Mr. Rutte called on Britain and other members to increase production of air and missile defense systems by 400 percent. He also said they needed to produce thousands more tanks and armored vehicles, and millions of additional artillery shells.
Mr. Rutte, who met earlier with Mr. Starmer, declined to say whether they discussed the spending target, though he lavished praise on the Labour government for its strategic defense review, published last week, which recommended ambitious investments in weaponry and military infrastructure.
Earlier on Monday, Mr. Rutte and Britain’s defense secretary, John Healey, toured a factory in Sheffield, in northern England, which produces steel parts used in nuclear-grade components for Royal Navy submarines.
Mr. Starmer has announced plans to build up to 12 new attack submarines and invest billions of pounds in other weaponry. Britain will procure up to 7,000 long-range weapons and invest money to safeguard critical underwater infrastructure as well as produce drones, which have proved lethal in the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Starmer described the threat facing Britain “as more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War.” He has positioned Britain as a bridge between Europe and the United States.
But despite Mr. Starmer’s ominous language, the prime minister is still hamstrung by tight public finances, and the government’s need to bolster spending for domestic priorities like the National Health Service.
Preparing a spending review to be announced this week, the chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, faced pressure from other cabinet ministers and municipal officials, who are complaining about inadequate investments in housing, law enforcement and capital projects for London.
Mr. Rutte said he sympathized with the trade-offs that the British government needed to make, noting that it could either raise taxes, cut spending on other programs or accept an increase in the budget deficit.
The Netherlands spends about 2.05 percent of its gross domestic product on defense, up from 1.3 percent when Mr. Rutte became prime minister. Some of that increase coincided with Mr. Rutte’s interest in the top NATO job.
Mr. Rutte showed his political instincts, crediting Mr. Trump with “breaking the deadlock” with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, by getting him to begin cease-fire negotiations with Ukraine. Mr. Rutte played down suggestions that NATO would rescind an offer to Ukraine to join the alliance because of pressure from Mr. Trump.
But he said the NATO summit would focus on other issues, so Ukraine’s future membership would not figure prominently.
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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