NATO's defense spending boost draws protest

DW (English)

NATO leaders are due to gather in The Hague on Tuesday, where they are set to sign off an increase in defense spending to 5% of GDP. Not everyone is happy about the alliance's new drive to militarize.

Transcript

00:00No to NATO. That's the message at this anti-war demo in The Hague, with leaders of the Western

00:09Military Alliance due to descend on the Dutch capital this week.

00:13We need to raise our voices as the ordinary people in the world. We do not want war. We

00:19want to be a warless generation and that's why I'm here.

00:23In what they say is a bid to avoid war, many European NATO nations are beefing up their

00:28armies. Plans massively sped up since Donald Trump took office.

00:34The United States has been pushing European governments to radically ramp up their defence

00:38spending and many have responded. Under new European Union rules countries will have more

00:43fiscal flexibility for their military expenditure.

00:47The Dutch government and others say the budget hikes are essential to ensure less reliance

00:51on Washington and to deter Russian threats. But these demonstrators are furious about the

00:57planned spending splurge, fearing other priorities will fall by the wayside.

01:02We cannot be justifying spending more on warfare and military spending and decreasing the budgets

01:08for social and arts and education.

01:10The actual future danger is the climate and ecological meltdown of our planet and we can't face that

01:18and all of the real problems that we have to transform society if we put all of our money

01:24and our energy into war.

01:26While surveys show many Europeans do support the bid to boost military capacities, it's clear

01:31the rapid shift toward rearming is not universally adored and the fierce democratic debate still

01:37lies ahead.

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