Experts in Latvia has paid close attention as US President-elect Donald Trump cast doubt on his administration’s approach to the NATO military alliance and Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to test the new US leader.
The Latvian parliament passed a budget that will see the country’s spending on defense rise from 1.4 percent of GDP this year to 1.7 percent next year and then up to the magic NATO number of 2 percent in 2018. Defense spending is one of the major factors Trump said he’d be looking at while gauging his enthusiasm for NATO’s Article 5 obligation, which calls for the entire alliance to respond to attacks on a single member.
