Illustration: Xia Qing/GT

Scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday in The Hague, the 2025 NATO Summit will focus on increasing defense spending and production to, in NATO's words, "prepare for an uncertain future, prevent a war on NATO territory and preserve our way of life." It's reported that NATO members agreed on Sunday to increase defense spending to 5 percent of their countries' GDP, a benchmark long sought by US President Donald Trump. Spain had sought to block the measure, but ultimately dropped its opposition after a deal was reached for it to be exempt. The agreement calls for at least 3.5 percent of national GDP to be spent on core military needs, while an additional 1.5 percent can be allocated for related expenditures.

However, for NATO, increasing defense spending does not necessarily mean strategic alignment; it may instead reveal growing divergences within the alliance. While European members focus on Russia, which is close to home, the US is pushing to shift NATO's attention toward China, as reflected in its alleged plans to redeploy troops from Europe to Asia. The Asia pivot risks dangerous escalation with China - potentially forcing NATO members into conflict with a key trading partner. Washington's simultaneous push to decouple Europe from Chinese trade while provoking Beijing threatens both European prosperity and sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the US is still engaging in a military buildup at a fast pace, while Trump's territorial claims over Canadian and Danish territory make any US troop buildup alarming. This explains Canada's push to reduce reliance on Washington - including buying European defense equipment- though overcoming the technology gap and production limits won't be easy.

NATO's fractures further reveal its existential crisis. Canada and Denmark eye Washington warily, while Eastern bulwarks on the European continent like Poland and Lithuania remain fixated on historical conflicts with Russia. Meanwhile, Hungary and Turkey maintain a good relationship with Moscow.

This mosaic of conflicting interests renders a unified strategy unworkable, transforming NATO into a fragile consortium of nations with irreconcilable security visions led by transnational globalist class interests. Compounding this instability is America's own erratic behavior - simultaneously jeopardizing the territorial integrity of member and non-member states alike while threatening to abandon its NATO obligations entirely. The result is an alliance that can neither effectively confront external threats nor manage its own internal contradictions.

Moreover, the 1.5 percent infrastructure demand of the 5 percent military spending goal further exposes NATO's true priorities: unlimited funding for troop movements, but crumbs for schools and hospitals. Military mobility gets blank checks; people get austerity. This is a perfect snapshot that globalist hegemony, wielded through NATO, overrides democracy's basic needs.

The push for increased NATO spending represents a calculated choice - every euro spent on arms is stolen from public welfare. This is an attempt to invoke external threats to justify austerity. Capital will exploit Russia's "specter" to normalize declining living standards - a lie already exposed by history. During the Cold War's peak, when Soviet influence loomed far larger than today's diminished Russia, Europe maintained robust social systems. Today's "security crisis" reveals its true purpose: dismantling the welfare state under false pretenses.

In fact, US demand for higher NATO spending isn't about collective defense - it's a shakedown. The US military-industrial complex, already dwarfing Europe's, strong-arms allies into funneling billions into American arms under the guise of "interoperability." Any attempt to shop elsewhere risks political retaliation.

Washington's NATO spending demands ignore a key fact: Every "defense dollar" stays in America - printed by the Fed, spent at the Pentagon, and handed to shareholders of arms dealer like Lockheed Martin. This isn't burden-sharing - it's corporate welfare. The real issue isn't Europe underspending, but Washington turning collective defense into a captive market for its overpriced arms.

NATO's core contradiction is its claim to prevent wars while actively enabling them. From Yugoslavia to Libya, NATO has served as a vehicle for Western interventions, leaving broken states behind. Even unofficial operations - like Iraq - rely on NATO's command structure and infrastructure, enabling endless war. This has in turn led to waves of refugees entering Europe - leading many Europeans to question whether "their way of life" is just as trivial as the states left in ruins by NATO aggression. The hard truth is that an alliance profiting from arms sales needs conflict zones - making NATO not a deterrent, but a designer of chaos.

The author is an independent international relations analyst who focuses on China's socialist development and global inequality. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn