Crosetto’s comments come ahead of the NATO leaders’ summit in The Hague next week, where the alliance is likely to agree on a higher spending target of 5 percent of GDP to placate U.S. President Donald Trump.
Among the leaders attending is Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. At a meeting in Rome earlier this month with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, her office “reaffirmed support for Ukraine and the Atlantic Alliance’s role as an essential pillar for collective defence.”
But according to Crosetto, NATO has failed in its original mission.
“If NATO was created to guarantee peace and mutual defense, it must either become an organization that takes on this task by engaging with the Global South — and thus become something profoundly different — or we will not achieve the goal of having security within rules that apply to everyone,” he said.
Most NATO members see the alliance as playing a key role in spearheading the rearmament and defense of Europe to fend off the growing threat posed by Russia.
Italy has traditionally been one of the alliance’s lowest spenders — although the government said in April that this year, it will hit NATO’s current target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense.
