PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 The U.S. ambassador to NATO renewed his country\u2019s criticism of the Czech Republic on Friday, saying it had failed to spend enough on defense.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is disappointing to see that it has not made more progress towards meeting the Hague Defense Commitment,\u201d Matthew Whitaker told a defense conference in Prague.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, the Czech Republic is trending towards the bottom of the alliance when it comes to defense spending,\u201d said Whitaker, who met with populist Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161 on Friday. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been small successes, but more certainly needs to be done, and this has been a message I delivered yesterday and today in person to our friends here in the Czech Republic,\u201d Whitaker added.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers aligned with Babi\u0161’ government approved a budget in March that allocates less than 1.8% of the country’s gross domestic product for defense this year. The approval came despite President Petr Pavel, a retired army general, urging an increase in the defense budget to meet NATO\u2019s commitment.<\/p>\n
Whitaker warned the Czech Republic at the time in a post on X: \u201cAll Allies must pull their weight and honor The Hague Defense Commitment. These numbers are not arbitrary. They are about meeting the moment \u2014 and the moment requires 5% as the standard. No excuses, no opt-outs. \u201c<\/p>\n
Responding on Friday, Babi\u0161 promised that defense spending would reach 2% of GDP next year.<\/p>\n
NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense, and the alliance expected all members \u2014 including the Czech Republic \u2014 to meet that target last year.<\/p>\n
At a summit in The Hague last year, NATO members, under pressure from the Trump administration, agreed to invest 3.5% of GDP on core defense requirements and an additional 1.5% on defense and security-related spending by 2035.<\/p>\n
Babi\u0161 returned to power after his ANO, or YES, movement won a decisive victory in an October election. It formed a governing coalition with two small political groups whose agenda includes reducing support for Ukraine and rejecting some key European Union policies.<\/p>\n
The Freedom and Direct Democracy party, which is anti-immigrant and a member of the coalition, wants to cut the defense budget for next year.<\/p>\n
Finance Minister Alena Schillerov\u00e1 recently said she currently considers a 5% target to be \u201cunrealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United States remains committed to NATO and defending every inch of allied territory, and the United States is not stepping back,” Whitaker said on Friday. “But we expect our allies to step up and join us and equalize with the United States.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 The U.S. ambassador to NATO renewed his country\u2019s criticism of the Czech Republic on Friday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,153359,157796,2724,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-852439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-ap-politics","tag-ap-world-news","tag-associated-press","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}