US Ambassador: NATO Tensions Over Defense Spending Are 'Growing Pains'

Tensions within NATO over the Trump administration's campaign to pressure allies on defense spending reflect "growing pains" rather than a crisis, the U.S. ambassador to the alliance told CNBC on Monday.

"The target is that Europe takes over the conventional defense of the European continent," he said. "We're not going away, we're just doing less," Ambassador Matthew Whitaker said about the U.S. involvement in European defense and security, ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey this week.

Whitaker said he saw current tensions around European governments' defense spending as "growing pains."

"I see these as just the challenges that we've worked through before," he said, highlighting uneven defense spending by European countries, including what he referred to as "laggards" that will have to commit to growing that number over the next decade.

At last year's NATO Summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, allies agreed on a defense spending target of 5% of GDP by 2035, including 3.5% on core defense spending.

It was widely seen as a breakthrough for the transatlantic alliance, and came after years of pressure from Washington.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has said that the task ahead is "to turn Allied commitments into concrete results," as world leaders meet in Ankara on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Security analysts have said that the summit is going to center around "burden shifting," with allies weighing how to organize defense without the U.S. at the center.

It comes as U.S. War Secretary Pete Hegseth in June announced a review of American forces in Europe and warned that allies failing to meet spending commitments could face consequences.

Rutte said at a press conference on Monday that the U.S. was "bringing NATO closer together" and that it was "wise" to have regular reviews of defense spending.

NATO allies need to translate economic means into military capabilities, overcome fragmented national defense industries, and cut red tape, Rutte said. He also said "tens of billions in new contracts" would be announced at the summit.

Whitaker highlighted Germany, Poland, the Baltic countries, and Denmark as clear-eyed about how to address security challenges.

Most European countries have significantly raised defense spending after years of U.S. security guarantees. However, some, like the U.K. and France, face more difficult budgetary trade-offs and fiscal restraints than others.

"NATO and our allies were asleep," Whitaker said. "We have revived it, and now we're just seeing what that process looks like."