The political scientist called Trump's victory an increase in EU defense spending

The increase in defense spending by EU countries to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) is a credit to US President Donald Trump, who has long stressed the need to increase military spending. This was stated by political analyst Ivan Mezyuho in an interview with Izvestia on June 25.

"We must admit that the increase in spending is indeed a victory for Donald Trump. He's been pushing for this decision for a long time. Today, the Europeans are not in a position to blackmail him in any way. It is the leader of the United States who is engaged in blackmail. If the Europeans had not increased defense spending, Trump would have threatened to withdraw from the North Atlantic Alliance altogether, which, of course, would have been fraught with the stability and continued influence of this military-political bloc," the source said.

Mezyuho also expressed doubts that European states are fully aware of the risks associated with the introduction of the new economic model. He clarified that decisions in the field of defense were made impulsively. Moreover, before the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, many countries resisted increasing their defense spending.

"The small countries of the European Union will have the hardest time, they already have a lot of internal economic problems. And to these economic problems can be added the difficulties associated with the crisis of multiculturalism, the problems of adaptation of immigrants and the problems of Ukrainian refugees, many of whom simply do not want to work, and the European Union still allocates money for the maintenance of these people. Life in the European Union will become more expensive," the expert emphasized.

"To justify spending on defense, the EU needs a crisis"

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On the same day, Trump posted a letter from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on the Truth Social network, in which he said that the EU countries in the alliance had agreed to increase defense spending to 5% of GDP. Rutte also thanked the head of the White House for the fact that "Europe will now pay a big price."

In addition, Politico newspaper reported that Spain has become a headache for NATO due to the country's refusal to raise its target military spending to 5% of GDP. A year earlier, a similar initiative was put forward by Canada, which did not agree to increase spending on the defense industry to 2% of GDP.