LISBON, Portugal — U.S. pressure on NATO allies to increase their defense spending “is not a hostile thing,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday, but reiterated that the Trump administration wants the military alliance to be a stronger deterrent against threats.
Rubio told reporters during a visit to European NATO ally Portugal that “the stronger the members of NATO are, the stronger NATO is, the stronger the alliances and the stronger the deterrence is.”
President Trump has long railed against NATO allies for spending too small a fraction of their national budgets on defense, leaving the United States to shoulder what he says is an unfair burden. Some members of the 32-country alliance have been reluctant to divert funds from other government policies, however.
“People sometimes view this call to invest more in defense as a hostile thing,” Rubio said. “It is not a hostile thing.”
Rubio, who was in Portugal on the last leg of a three-nation tour of NATO allies that also included Iceland and Greece, acknowledged that some smaller NATO members, such as Portugal, have difficulty finding the funds for major military projects.
“Every country is of a different size and proportion. Some countries can contribute more than others, but every country in NATO needs to be as strong as they can possibly be,” Rubio told a news conference in Lisbon.
He noted the danger of the war in Ukraine, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022, spilling beyond Ukrainian borders. An apparent stalemate in Ukraine could bring a military escalation in Europe, he said.
“That escalation could wind up being a sabotage campaign in neighboring countries that are members of NATO,” he said. That could “quickly turn what is a war between two countries into a much broader and far more dangerous regional conflict.”
European officials have accused Moscow of a campaign of sabotage and disruption aimed at undermining support for Ukraine and destabilizing European nations.
Rubio also said that the Trump administration will keep trying to facilitate a negotiated settlement to the war, but that it has been difficult.
“We have tried, we will continue to try, but we’re also not going to invest in pointless processes if we can’t make progress,” he said, coming after new Russian strikes in eastern Ukraine killed 30 people.
Meanwhile, Rubio also praised Portuguese efforts toward meeting the NATO target for defense spending.
Portugal, a country of fewer than 11 million people, spends just over 2% of its gross domestic product on defense, according to NATO. The government says it plans to increase defense spending to around 3%, including dual-use investments in civilian infrastructure.
That still leaves it below the 5% of GDP set aside for defense spending that Trump has demanded and that requires investment at an unprecedented scale in Europe.
Portuguese Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said at the news conference that his country views its relationship with the U.S. as “fundamental.”
Portugal provided support for American operations in the Iran war by allowing the U.S. to use the Lajes Field air base in the mid-Atlantic Azores islands, which is strategically located for military refueling flights.
The U.S. Air Force has long had a base there under an agreement with Portugal. Unlike neighboring Spain, where Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist, refused to allow the American military to use Spanish bases to stage operations for attacks on Iran, Portugal’s center-right government granted Washington “conditional approval” to use Lajes Field.
“Portugal is a great ally, very cooperative ally of the United States and a country with which we already have a solid and growing relationship. And we visit these countries in order to reinforce those ties,” Rubio said before arriving in Lisbon. “That’s the purpose of the trip.”
Some Portuguese political parties balked at the decision to allow the U.S. to use the Azores islands air base, however. Following a formal complaint by a small left-wing political party called Left Bloc, the country’s attorney general’s office said last week that it’s looking into whether the use of the Lajes Field base was lawful.
Rubio visited Portugal a day after delivering a speech in the Greek capital, Athens, urging European countries to save Western civilization by upholding the values and traditions of ancient Greece.
Lee and Hatton write for the Associated Press.
The post Rubio says U.S. pressure on NATO allies to boost defense spending is ‘not hostile’ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
