EDITORIAL: Growing US push on defence spending set to test Marles at NATO summit

The pressure from the United States for Australia to do more on defence spending continues to grow.

Nobody should be surprised. A key theme of the Trump years has been his belief that the US is being ripped off by its allies who rely on America to do the heavy lifting on defence and security.

President Donald Trump for many years has protested loudly that NATO allies in particular don’t do enough, demanded they spend more on their defence and even threatened to quit the alliance.

The message has got through. Earlier this month NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte set out a plan for NATO members to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence.

The Trump team’s guns have more recently been turned onto Australia. At a meeting with Defence Minister Richard Marles in Singapore, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth urged Australia to increase its military spending to 3.5 per cent of GDP — and to do so “as soon as possible”. That would take Australia’s spend far beyond the projected 2.3 per cent by 2033.

But Mr Marles and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have stuck to the line that the Government would determine its defence budget based on strategic needs rather than meeting any benchmark.

Adding to the pressure, the US announced it would review AUKUS, the submarine pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US.

Today it emerged that Mr Hegseth had stepped up his push again when he spoke to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“As we shift toward the Indo-Pacific, we’re looking more to our allies and partners to be force multipliers alongside the United States,” he said.

“And with NATO stepping up, we now have a new standard for Allied defence spending that all of our allies around the world, including in Asia should move to.

“As the President has rightly pointed out, it’s only fair that allies and partners do their part,” Mr Hegseth said.

It is a sure bet that the pressure will continue to ramp up ahead of next week’s NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, which will convene roughly in the middle of the two week period Mr Trump has given himself to decide whether to join Israel’s strikes against Iran.

Through no fault of his own, Mr Albanese missed out on a chance to sit down with Mr Trump when the President abruptly left the G7 summit this week to deal with the Middle East crisis.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says in an opinion piece in The Nightly today that Mr Albanese should never have relied on meeting the President, for the first time, on the sidelines of the G7, months after Mr Trump’s inauguration.

The Prime Minister could have, and should have, gone to Washington sooner to make the case for Australia’s interests, Ms Ley says.

Today it was confirmed that Mr Albanese will not attend the NATO summit.

As originally planned, Mr Marles will represent Australia at what looms as a potentially critical meeting.

If he continues to resist the defence spending push from the US it might not go well for him in The Hague.