October 16, 2025
Trump's threat concerned military spending: he essentially said that if Europe does not contribute to military expenses, the USA might not intervene in the event of an attack on a NATO country (specifically the Baltics).
In fact, the American request had been ongoing for a long time. Now, if Trump demands 5% while threatening to broadly interpret Article 5 of NATO (essentially, not to intervene in case of an attack on a member country), what can European countries do? And, in fact, they have all agreed, regardless of their political alignment.