NATO general secretary Mark Rutte gives a press conference after the meeting of NATO Ministers of Defence in Brussels, on February 13, 2025. Photo: AFP / Simon Wohlfahrt
The Secretary General of NATO says he is making the case for increased defence spending across the Indo-Pacific region, including New Zealand.
Mark Rutte was questioned at a summit in Brussels about the risks the alliance was facing.
He urged NATO allies to lift spending to about 3 percent of their economies, and said China and North Korea remained some of the biggest threats.
"What I'm really doing in NATO is to make that push for more spending. It's not up to me of course to advise Japan or Korea or Australia or New Zealand on their spending levels," he said.
New Zealand spends just over 1 percent of GDP on defence. It isn't a member of NATO, but is formally a partner.
According to World Bank data, it last spent 3 percent in 1980.
US President Donald Trump has also been pushing for higher defence spending in Europe - and may yet push for other countries to do the same.
In his first term, he urged NATO members to spend two percent of GDP on defence, and he has since expressed he wanted to see that rise to three or even five percent.
Rutte said on occasion, he got more calls about defence from Indo-Pacific leaders than he did from nations closer to NATO.
He was not looking to expand the alliance, he said, but stated that NATO stood with those in the Indo-Pacific region.
"I have sometimes more phone calls coming out of Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Japan from senior politicians there than from some NATO allies.
"They are really worried about what is happening there, they want us to work closer together," he said.
New Zealand Defence Minister Judith Collins is currently in Germany [https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/541789/experts-fear-entire-international-order-is-crumbling
for an international security conference].
Before she left, Collins said New Zealand relied on a "safe and interconnected world" so Ukraine, the Middle East and rising tensions in the Indo-Pacific mattered to it.
"We are committed to reinvigorating our security relationships, to playing our part, and working with like-minded partners to uphold the international rules-based system and democratic values," she said in a statement.
Collins had previously said the region was "deteriorating at a rate not seen in decades.
