NATO Executive Director Mark Latte has urged all 32 member countries to devote more funding, equipment and political energy to the world’s largest military alliance as the United States retreats from its major security role in Europe.
“In 2025, we need to significantly increase our efforts to ensure that NATO remains an important source of military superiority for all countries. Our continued freedom and prosperity depends on it.”
NATO has been causing confusion since February, when US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses warned that American safety priorities are elsewhere and that Europe must take care of its own safety and Ukraine’s security.
Rutte’s report was posted on the NATO website without any obvious publicity.
Over the past few years, the Secretary General has promoted his annual report in press conferences and press releases.
NATO did not respond when asked why the approach was changed.
Latte was in Washington on Thursday for a meeting with senior US officials two months before he served as the chairman of the summit for Dutch President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts.
Leaders are expected to set new guidelines for defence spending.
In 2023, as Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine entered its second year, they agreed that all allies should spend at least 2% of their GDP on their military budgets.
Estimates from the annual report show that 22 allies have reached that target compared to 23 forecasts last year.
Not Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain.
The US is now estimated to have spent 3.19% of GDP in 2024, with all NATO members pledging to increase their defensive spending after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula.
Although it is only ally that has a lower percentage of GDP than in 2014, the US is still spending more on terms than others combined.
The report estimates that NATO military spending totaled last year reached around $1.3 trillion (1.1 trillion euros).
In a sign of how dominant the US is within NATO, Hegses told Europeans and Canada in February that Ukraine would not reclaim all territory from Russia and would not be allowed to join the military alliance.
“NATO’s support for Ukraine remained strong in 2024,” Latte wrote in the report.
“Looking at the future, NATO allies are surrounded by a desire for just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” writes Latte.
It was a modest rating of support compared to that of his predecessor, Jens Stoltenberg, just a year ago.
“Ukraine must win as an independent, sovereign state,” Stoltenberg wrote in his final annual report. “Supporting Ukraine is not in charity, it is in our own security interests.”
