What to expect at the NATO summit in The Hague?

NATO members are set to convene for their upcoming summit on June 24 and 25 in The Hague, the Netherlands, at a time when they face a range of complex external security challenges and hold seemingly irreconcilable views on how to respond to and deter critical threats.

Setting a new target for allied defense spending will be the primary discussion item.

NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels on Thursday "broadly" agreed to pursue a significant increase in member states' military spending to 5 percent of GDP.

However, sharp disagreements over the timeline and specific spending categories have exposed deep divisions.

"There's broad support. We're really close," said Mark Rutte, NATO's secretary general, in comments to reporters after the meeting. He expressed "total confidence" that an agreement would be reached by the next NATO summit in three weeks.

Rutte proposed a compromise: setting a target of 3.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for core military spending, with an additional 1.5 percent allocated to broader security-related areas such as infrastructure by 2032. This proposal will be formally discussed and finalized at the upcoming NATO summit.

U.S. President Donald Trump has long pressed NATO allies to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. The allied countries have ramped up defense spending since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine broke out more than three years ago. However, almost a third of the members still do not meet the bloc's current target of at least 2 percent defense spending.

On Sunday, Spain agreed with NATO to cap its military spending at 2.1 percent of GDP. "Spain will need to allocate 2.1 percent of its GDP to acquire and maintain all the personnel, equipment, and infrastructure requested by the Alliance to address emerging threats and challenges," Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez stated at a press conference at La Moncloa Palace. "No more, no less."

However, Sanchez formally rejected the 5 percent target on Thursday, emphasizing that Spain has no intention of committing to such a level.

The sharpest divisions arose over the 2032 deadline and which expenditures should count toward the two spending categories. While some countries criticized the timeline as too slow, others argued that the target is unrealistic given current budgetary constraints and industrial capabilities.

Lithuanian Defense Minister Dovile Sakaliene advocated for an earlier deadline, asserting that 2032 is "definitely too late" and calling for a 2030 target. Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur added that Estonia would meet the 5 percent goal by next year and urged other nations to follow suit within five years.

In contrast, countries such as Spain, Germany, and Belgium raised concerns about feasibility. For these nations, meeting the 5 percent target would be "extremely difficult." The United Kingdom and Italy, meanwhile, are aiming for a more moderate goal of increasing core defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP by 2035.

According to NATO data, 23 of its 32 members are expected to meet the 2 percent of GDP defense spending threshold by the end of this summer. Spain and Italy have committed to reaching that level by year's end, while Canada expects to meet the target by 2027.

According to Russia Today citing a recent report by Bloomberg, the statement of this summit will not mention the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO.

Ukraine has long sought to become a member of NATO, but Russia has always regarded NATO's eastward expansion as a serious threat to national security and listed it as one of the root causes of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

The Russian Foreign Ministry recently again called on NATO to stop its eastward expansion as a prerequisite for ending the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, saying that it is a test of whether the United States is serious about improving relations with Russia.

However, an expert has said that NATO has never been a booster for the political solution of the conflict, but rather a driving force behind the intensification of conflict.

NATO's role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is to "add fuel to the fire" to the conflict, said Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University. After all, crisis confrontation and even war are the fundamental reason for NATO's existence and the most basic means to strengthen its own functions, Li told CMG.

Meanwhile, according to Foreign Policy magazine, even though the Middle East is not a traditional focus of NATO, the region is now expected to become a major focus of the upcoming summit due to the U.S. attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Hundreds of people have protested in the Hague against NATO and increased military spending ahead of the summit. While the demonstration was billed as opposing NATO and the war in Gaza, it also drew participants holding banners reading "No Iran War."