BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Thursday urged the 32 member nations to devote more funds, equipment and political energy to the world’s biggest military alliance, as the United States steps back from its leading security role in Europe.
“In 2025, we need to significantly increase our efforts to ensure NATO remains a key source of military advantage for all our nations. Our continued freedom and prosperity depend on it,” Rutte wrote in his annual report.
NATO has been in disarray since February, when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned that America’s security priorities lie elsewhere -– in Asia and on its own borders -– and that Europe would have to look after its own security and that of Ukraine, in future.
Rutte’s report was posted on NATO’s website without any obvious publicity. In previous years, secretaries-general have promoted their annual reports with news conferences and press releases. NATO did not respond when asked why the approach has changed.
Rutte was in Washington on Thursday for meetings with senior U.S. officials, two months before he’s due to chair a summit of U.S. President Donald Trump and his NATO counterparts in the Netherlands.
The leaders are expected to set on a new NATO guideline for defense 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 gross domestic product on their military budgets.
Estimates in the annual report showed that 22 allies had reached that goal last year, compared to a previous forecast of 23. Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain did not. Spain does expect to reach the goal this year, but the new goal could be over 3%.
The United States is now estimated to have spent 3.19% of GDP in 2024, down from 3.68% a decade ago when all NATO members vowed to increase defense spending after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.
While it’s the only ally to have lower spending as a percentage of GDP than in 2014, the U.S. still spends more in dollar terms than the others combined. The report estimated that total NATO military spending last year reached around $1.3 trillion.
In a sign of just how dominant the United States is within NATO, Hegseth told the Europeans and Canada in February that Ukraine would not get all its territory back from Russia and would not be allowed to join their military alliance.
“NATO support for Ukraine remained strong in 2024,” Rutte wrote in the report, even as doubts surround the Trump administration’s commitment to the country as ceasefire talks falter.
“Looking to the future, NATO allies are united in their desire for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine,” Rutte wrote. It was a low-key assessment of backing compared to that of his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg just a year ago.
“Ukraine must prevail as an independent, sovereign nation,” Stoltenberg wrote in his last annual report. “Supporting Ukraine is not charity, it is in our own security interest.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte at the Pentagon, Thursday, April 24, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pose for a photo during their meeting in Odesa, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 15, 2025.(Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, center left, shares a laugh with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, center right, before the start of a meeting, Thursday, April 24, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, center, meets with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, at the Pentagon, Thursday, April 24, 2025 in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
President Donald Trump on Thursday visits a U.S. base installation at the center of American involvement in the Middle East as he uses his four-day visit to Gulf states to reject the “interventionism” of America’s past in the region.
In other parts of the Middle East violence flared in the West Bank and Gaza, A hospital in southern Gaza says 54 people have been killed in overnight airstrikes on the city of Khan Younis.
with a pregnant Israeli woman killed even as the international rights group ,Human Rights Watch ,said that Israel’s plan to seize Gaza, remain in the territory and displace hundreds of thousands of people “inches closer to extermination.”
Trump plans to address troops at Qatar’s al-Udeid Air Base, which was a major staging ground during the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and supported the recent U.S. air campaign against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis. The president has held up Gulf nations like Saudi Arabia and Qatar as models for economic development in a region plagued by conflict as he works to entice Iran to come to terms with his administration on a deal to curb its nuclear program.
The President also meets business leaders in Qatar and heads to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
Trump sat with GE Aerospace’s Larry Culp and Boeing Co.’s Kelly Ortberg on either side of him on Thursday. Both praised Trump for his support for the Qatar Airways order for Boeing aircraft. Ortberg called it one of the largest orders Boeing has ever had.
A hospital in southern Gaza says 54 people have been killed in overnight airstrikes on the city of Khan Younis.
An Associated Press cameraman in Khan Younis counted 10 airstrikes on the city overnight into Thursday, and saw numerous bodies taken to the morgue in the city’s Nasser Hospital. Some bodies arrived in pieces, with some body bags containing the remains of multiple people. The hospital’s morgue confirmed 54 people had been killed.
It was the second night of heavy bombing, after airstrikes Wednesday on northern and southern Gaza killed at least 70 people, including almost two dozen children.
The strikes come as U.S. President Donald Trump visits the Middle East, visiting Gulf states but not Israel. There had been widespread hope that Trump’s regional visit could usher in a ceasefire deal or renewal of humanitarian aid to Gaza. An Israeli blockade of the territory is now in its third month.
Qatar’s satellite news channel Al Jazeera long has been a powerful force in the Middle East, often taking editorial positions at odds with America’s interests in the region during the wars that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by al-Qaida.
But during President Donald Trump’s visit to the Gulf Arab nation this week, state-funded Al Jazeera muted its typical critiques of American foreign policy.
The channel, which broadcasts in Arabic and English, broadly covered Trump’s visit in a straightforward manner, highlighting it was the first-ever trip to Qatar by a sitting American leader. Mentions of the Israel-Hamas war, which Al Jazeera often has criticized America over for its military support to Israel, did not include any critiques of U.S. policy. Instead, journalists highlighted Qatar’s role as a mediator in the war and aired comments by Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, calling for a ceasefire.
After a morning meeting with top U.S. and Qatari officials and American defense and aerospace business leaders, Trump heads to Al-Udeid Air Base, a U.S. installation at the center of American involvement in the Middle East. There, he will address troops and is expected to view a demonstration of American air capability.
The president then travels to the United Arab Emirates, the final leg of his first major foreign trip. He will head first to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque and then to a state visit hosted at Abu Dhabi’s Qasr al-Watan palace.
The international rights group said that Israel’s plan to seize Gaza, remain in the territory and displace hundreds of thousands of people “inches closer to extermination.”
It called on the international community to speak out against the plan. It said that the new plans, coupled with the “systematic destruction” of civilian infrastructure and the block on all imports into Gaza, were cause for signatories to the Genocide Convention to act to prevent Israel’s moves. It said states should halt weapons transfers to Israel and enforce international arrest warrants against Israel’s prime minister and former defense minister, as well as review their bilateral agreements with the country.
Israel vehemently denies accusations that it is committing genocide in Gaza.
The group also called on Hamas to free the 58 hostages it still holds in Gaza, 23 of whom are believed to be alive.
A pregnant Israeli woman has died after she was shot and critically wounded in a shooting attack in the occupied West Bank, a hospital said Thursday.
Beilinson Hospital said that doctors succeeded in saving her unborn baby, who was in serious but stable condition after being delivered by caesarean section.
The Israeli military said a Palestinian assailant opened fire on a vehicle late Wednesday, wounded two civilians. Soldiers launched a search for the attacker.
It’s the latest violence in the Palestinian territory, where the Israeli military has launched a major operation that it says is meant to crack down on militancy. The operation has displaced tens of thousands of people.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank in months of violence that surged there after the start of the war in Gaza.
Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani welcomes President Donald Trump during an official welcoming ceremony at the Amiri Diwan in Doha, Qatar, Wednesday, May 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
