Just two weeks ahead of the NATO summit in The Hague, former Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme has sharply criticized the alliance’s proposed five-percent-of-GDP defense target, calling it a “collective irrationality” that risks overwhelming European decision-making.
Speaking in Brussels on Wednesday at Investment Officer’s Portfolio Day, Leterme questioned the logic, and lack of debate, behind Europe’s rapid alignment with what he described as a Trump-era proposal.
“The fact that we so readily accept spending five percent of our national wealth on defense, not just once, but every single year, is staggering.”
“I no longer carry political responsibility,” he said, “so I can speak my mind. And what I see is a wave of irrational decisions with very little parliamentary scrutiny.”
Geopolitical emotion
Leterme, who today advises Chinese companies, delivered a keynote speech on Europe’s global role. His tone was sobering. He warned that Europe is increasingly vulnerable to policy shifts driven more by geopolitical emotion than hard economic analysis.
“The most recent example is the sharp rise in defense budgets,” he said. “In recent weeks, we’ve seen a form of collective irrationality, triggered by the Trump administration. I admit there may be economic opportunities tied to it, but the fact that we so readily accept spending five percent of our national wealth on defense, not just once, but every single year, is staggering.”
Leterme, who was the prime minister of Belgium from March 2008 to December 2008, and later from November 2009 to December 2011, reserved particular criticism for the plan’s composition and lack of clarity.
“Where is the debate?” he asked. “Where are the justifications? Are there solid reasons for this? It took six to eight weeks before anyone in politics even asked what this five percent actually means.”
Trump and Rutte: setting the NATO bar
U.S. President Donald Trump has long pressured NATO allies to increase defense spending. Where the alliance previously agreed on a two-percent target, Trump now insists member states must commit five percent of GDP. NATO’s new secretary-general, former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, has largely echoed that demand.
Rutte recently floated a two-tier proposal: 3.5 percent of GDP for hard military assets and 1.5 percent for supporting infrastructure and cybersecurity.
“Russia could be ready to use military force against NATO within five years,” Rutte warned last weekend in a speech at Chatham House, urging an unprecedented 400 percent increase in Europe’s air and missile defense capabilities.
The new funding goal is set to be formalized at the NATO summit in The Hague on 24 and 25 June.
‘We’re losing the Enlightenment mindset’
While Leterme acknowledged the rising threat from Russia, he said the proposed response feels unbalanced.
“Yes, Europe must strengthen its defenses. But the scale of this proposal, and the focus on fighter jets, is disproportionate.”
More importantly, he argued, the entire process betrays the Enlightenment ideals on which Western democracies were built.
“I am not a defense expert,” he admitted. “But I do know that the way this decision-making is unfolding, with the active participation of my good friend and former colleague Mark Rutte, reveals a troubling trend: Western societies are making long-term decisions about their futures in an increasingly irrational manner.”
To Leterme, it is a stark illustration of Europe’s relative powerlessness in defense and geopolitics.
Belgium: a 30 billion euro question
Leterme also cast doubt on the feasibility of such spending for smaller EU member states.
“How is Belgium supposed to finance this?” he asked. Belgium’s GDP stands at just over 600 billion euros. The government recently committed to reaching the existing NATO target of two percent, roughly 12 billion euros per year.
Raising that to five percent would mean another 18 billion annually, bringing the total to 30 billion euros a year.
“I’m not the fastest calculator,” Leterme said dryly, “but it seems nearly impossible to make that work from a budgetary and technical perspective.”