Hegseth presses NATO allies as US ramps up spending

The United States Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, has told NATO’s defence ministers that some allies still need to do more even as Washington pours record sums into its own military, in remarks alongside the Secretary General that cast the alliance as entering a harder-edged new era.

Speaking at the start of what he called the last big meeting before next month’s summit in Ankara, the Secretary General Mark Rutte welcomed Hegseth and declared that “NATO 3.0 is really happening”, the shorthand both men used for a stronger Europe and a stronger alliance, with Ankara set to be, in Rutte’s words, all about implementation.

Rutte credited a speech Hegseth had given on his first NATO visit in February 2025, in which the American had pressed allies to spend more, raise production and strike a fair deal with the United States, and said Europeans had now responded, pointing to what he described as over 90 billion dollars in additional defence spending across Europe and Canada in 2025, an increase of almost 20 per cent. The alliance had to keep producing more on both sides of the Atlantic, Rutte said, in order to out-build China, Russia and others rapidly expanding their own defence output.

Hegseth returned the praise, crediting Rutte with leading the way in partnership with President Donald Trump, and described NATO 3.0 as a recognition that the alliance needed to return to being “a real hard line military alliance” with the capabilities to deter on the continent and to take the lead for the conventional defence of Europe, a shift he said European nations were now making.

While many countries were following through on the commitments made at last year’s Hague summit, Hegseth said, some still needed to do more, and he made clear he would say so plainly, telling reporters the United States would “be candid about that, both in private and in public” in the spirit of “friends being honest with friends”, a message he said he would deliver in his meetings through the day.

Hegseth was equally keen to stress what the United States was doing, describing a planned 1.5 trillion dollar defence investment in the 2027 financial year as “a message to the world”, and saying he would spend weeks on Capitol Hill making the case for the spending through the budget process. The aim, he said, was to build what he called “the arsenal of freedom”, one that first and foremost protected America and its interests but also backstopped the strength of NATO and its allies.

The remarks set the tone for a defence ministerial that comes at a pivotal moment for the alliance, with the United States having told allies it will commit fewer guaranteed forces to NATO’s force model and asked European members and Canada to take up the slack, and with senior officials warning that an increasingly reckless Russia is testing NATO’s airspace from the Baltic to the High North, all of it feeding into the agenda for Ankara.