Panel: Will NATO's defense push secure or endanger Europe?

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• 00:10

  Hello and welcome to World Today, I'm Zhao Ying.

• 00:15

  NATO leaders have agreed to ramp up military spending to 5% of their national GDP by 2035.

• 00:22

  They made the pledge at a summit in The Hague following months of pressure from US President Donald Trump.

• 00:28

  Trump hailed the summit as a big success and reaffirmed his commitment to collective defense.

• 00:34

  In a private message that Trump later made public,

• 00:38

  NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte wrote that Trump's push

• 00:41

  for increased defense spending would help achieve something no American president in decades could get done.

• 00:48

  The former Dutch prime minister used even more flattering language later in the day,

• 00:53

  calling Trump the daddy who had to step in after the US president compared Israel and Iran to two kids in a schoolyard.

• 01:01

  Is NATO bending too far to keep Trump on site,

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  or is it just what modern transatlantic alliance looks like?

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  And by raising defense spending to levels not seen since the Cold War,

• 01:12

  does this really make Europe safer,

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  or does it risk triggering a new arms race and provoking more conflicts?

• 01:19

  With me today, Ruth van Dyck,

• 01:22

  professor in history of international relations at University of Amsterdam in Netherlands.

• 01:27

  Chen Weihua, China daily EU bureau chief based in Brussels, and Kamal Makili Aliev,

• 01:33

  associate professor at the School of Global Studies at University of Gothenburg.

• 01:39

  Gentlemen, welcome to you all.

• 01:41

  And Professor Van Dyke, let me start with you.

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