How will Europe deal with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth?

As NATO defense ministers meet this week, European allies will come face to face with the new US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the first time. 

Several diplomatic sources have told DW that while there is growing unanimity to spend more than 2% — an earlier pledge made by a record 23 European allies just last year — a specific percentage increase would probably be made in June at the yearly NATO summit. 

US President Donald Trump has called on member states to spend 5% of their national GDP on defense, a figure most allies find unrealistic. 

For now, it is all about showing Hegseth that the allies are doing their bit — the European Union and Canada boosted their defense spending by 20% in 2024 compared to the previous year. In addition, defense ministers are keen to get a sense of the likely direction of future US policy. 

Drawing the US defense secretary closer to EU allies

"First and foremost, it is about building a rapport with him, learning about US's thinking," Rafael Loss, a senior fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), told DW. 

"He doesn't have much policy experience, there's no history of him engaging with defense leaders and NATO. Officials in NATO will try to get a sense of his priorities and point him to the NATO planning process, while pushing the specific discussion on an exact percentage to NATO's June summit." 

The focus of the meeting will be to draw Hegseth's attention to NATO's step-by-step approach towards increasing defense spending. 

Sources said that instead of agreeing to a set number, European allies intend to highlight their defense plans and the capabilities needed to achieve these plans and then discuss the investments required to procure these capabilities. 

Experts believe the hardest thing will be to win over Hegseth — a former Fox News host who has voiced skepticism about the alliance between the United States and Europe — in dealing with common security challenges. 

"The defense of Europe is not our problem; been there, done that, twice,” Hegseth has written in the past, adding: "NATO is a relic and should be scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended." 

European allies hope he may change his mind as he visits Germany, meets officials at NATO in Brussels, and visits Poland later in the week. 

"There are multiple ways in which the American presence in Europe helps power projection in other parts of the world," Loss said. 

"Hegseth is visiting US Africa Command (AFRICOM) headquarters in Germany which facilitates most US military operations in Africa, and similarly US deployment to the Middle East is facilitated through air bases in Germany... if you start unwinding this you have to think about where to go instead." 

The allies are gearing up to do more for Ukraine themselves. In place of the US, the UK will lead the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting this week to discuss the war-torn country's military needs. 

Europe, however, is treading a cautious path and excluding Greenland from the official agenda of the meeting, despite the fact that Trump has threatened to invade Greenland, which is a protectorate of Denmark, a NATO member state. 

But its measures so far, including a desire to increase spending, have not been enough for the new US administration, which seeks more European expenditure on defence and wants American weapons in particular to be bought with that money. 

Trump's 5% demand viewed as unrealistic 

Increasing defense spending, as Trump has demanded, by 5% would mean shelling out hundreds of billions of euros from state coffers by either reshaping national budgets — for example, by cutting social benefits or by imposing higher taxes. 

Both options are unpopular in an aging continent with rising pension bills and lengthening waiting lists to access healthcare. 

Germany's current government is particularly averse to diverting social spending, especially in an election year. The country's Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has said investing 5% towards defense would eat up about 40% of Germany's government budget. 

Ricarda Lang, co-chair of Germany's Green Party, has said the required funding can't come from the current budget alone. "We must ensure that the security situation is not played off against social security in the country."

Germany met the 2% military spending target last year for the first time. 

Italy, where defense spending is sitting at around 1.5%, believes lifting it to 5% as impossible. It has only just expressed a willingness to increase it to 2% by 2028. 

"I don't think it will be 5%, which would be impossible for almost every nation in the world right now," Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has said. 

Leo Goretti, head of the Italian foreign policy program at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, an Italian think tank, told DW that Italy's economy is already struggling. 

"Italy has had to take on high debt, the second highest debt in the EU, to pay its existing bills," he said. "There is a public perception that the government should not invest in defense when there are other issues that impact people daily and more directly." 

A coalition of the willing to boost defense spending 

One suggestion is for the EU to take on common debt to strengthen its collective defenses and also buy American weapons to keep favor with the US. 

But frugal or fiscally conservative states such as the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Sweden oppose common debt.

European allies continue to lack any consensus on how to raise the money. There is currently talk about joint procurement and avoiding duplication of key defense capabilities in the hope of cutting costs and keeping overall spending below 5%. 

There is even discussion of forming a coalition of the willing to boost spending, working with non-EU states such as Norway and the United Kingdom while excluding those deemed pro-Russia, such as Slovakia and Hungary. 

Some experts believe that Europe simply isn't ready for the fundamental shift in ties that Trump and his team have in mind. 

"Many European leaders are hoping that there's a bargain that can be struck, by which maybe they spend a bit more buy a few more US weapons, and then everything stays the same," Max Bergmann of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) told DW.

"But I think the Trump administration, fundamentally, wants to alter the status quo." 

Edited by: Jess Smee