Spend 4% of GDP on Defense: Trump

• 12 Jul 2018

The leaders of 29 NATO member countries and many partner nations met in Brussels (Belgium) for the annual NATO summit. The theme for this year’s summit was to strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defense, step up the fight against terrorism, and achieve a fairer burden-sharing mechanism.

Key Highlights

• The summit was held against a backdrop of deepening transatlantic tensions in fields ranging from trade to energy and defense.
• The United States (US) demanded that members double their defence spending commitments.
• At the 2014 summit, NATO allies had agreed to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. However, the US suggested that countries not only meet their commitment of 2% expenditure on defence but also increase it to 4% immediately.
• At the end of the summit, all 29 NATO members backed a joint statement committing themselves to greater ‘burden sharing’ and to the alliance’s founding commitment that an attack on one member is an attack on them all.

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

• The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 29 North American and European countries.
• The alliance is based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed on April 4, 1949.
• It constitutes a system of collective defence whereby its independent member states agree to mutual defence in response to an attack by any external party.
• NATO Headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium, while the headquarters of Allied Command Operations is near Mons, Belgium.