<\/p>\n
Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n NATO said on Wednesday that Europe had increased its spending on defense and the United States needed allies, days after former US president Donald Trump suggested that Washington might not protect countries that did not spend enough.<\/p>\n \u201cI expect 18 allies to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense this year,\u201d Jens Stoltenberg said at a news conference in Brussels, adding overall military spending was set for another record year after two years of Russia\u2019s full-fledged war against Ukraine.<\/p>\n The number was higher than last year, when 11 of NATO\u2019s 31 members were expected to reach the agreed target.<\/p>\n Trump shocked Europeans on Saturday by implying that he would encourage Russia \u201cto do whatever the hell they want\u201d to NATO allies who did not spend enough.<\/p>\n Addressing journalists\u2019 questions linked to the controversy around Trump\u2019s comments ahead of a NATO ministers\u2019 meeting, Stoltenberg said the United States knew how important the defense alliance is for its own security.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States have never fought a war alone,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe criticism we hear is not about NATO, it is about NATO allies not spending enough on NATO,\u201d he added, saying the new hike in military spending by European allies was proof this message had been heard.<\/p>\n NATO\u2019s European states would invest a combined total of $380 billion in defense this year, Stoltenberg added.<\/p>\n The German government is allocating the equivalent of 71.8 billion euros ($76.8 billion) for defense spending in the current year through regular and special budget outlays. However, the sum of its total defense spending is classified.<\/p>\n In 2023, eleven allies are expected to have met the 2 percent target according to prior NATO estimates – Poland, the United States, Greece, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Latvia, Britain and Slovakia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sudan Events – Sumaya Sayed\u00a0 NATO said on Wednesday that Europe had increased its spending on defense and the United States needed allies, days after former US president Donald Trump suggested that Washington might not protect countries that did not spend enough. \u201cI expect 18 allies to spend 2 percent of their GDP on …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14244,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14242\/revisions\/14244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}