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HELSINKI — President Trump’s loudest complaints about NATO — that Europe isn’t pulling its weight in defense spending and security — are meeting a different reality in Finland, one of the alliance’s newest Nordic members.
Finland’s top foreign and defense officials say their country’s response to the critical U.S. rhetoric and the calls for increased defense spending is not about pledges or promises, but rather a balance sheet showing how high the nation’s security priorities were before joining NATO.
“We have exactly the same position as President Trump in the sense that we think that NATO is not at its full potential yet,” Foreign Affairs Minister Elina Valtonen said May 12 in a media roundtable discussion with journalists, including a reporter from The Washington Times’ Threat Status platform. “The European countries have not invested enough from their pocket in the defense of deterrence. Finland certainly has.”
Mr. Trump ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 or more U.S. soldiers from Germany, prompting countries along NATO’s eastern flank to push back against the perception that they are a security drain on the alliance.
“Finland has spent a significant portion of GDP even before it became a member state,” Ms. Valtonen said.
Without question, Helsinki was watching closely over the past decade as the dynamics of U.S. military aid and security guarantees to Europe through NATO became a core issue in American foreign policy debates.
Mr. Trump has made the issue a centerpiece of his national security philosophy and has insisted that European nations spend much more on their own defense rather than rely on the U.S. military as a backstop in the event of conflict.
Mr. Trump’s approach, although criticized for being too rhetorically harsh toward NATO, has paid dividends. Each NATO nation has promised to spend at least 5% of its gross domestic product on defense by 2035. Mr. Trump has also pressed NATO countries to stop importing Russian oil to put economic pressure on Moscow.
Finland’s unique position
Finland joined NATO in April 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine. The assault struck a nerve among many Finns, given their country’s difficult history with Moscow.
The Soviet Union annexed substantial territory from Finland, most notably Karelia, during and after World War II.
Despite that history, Helsinki remained militarily nonaligned for decades. Less than a quarter of the Finnish population supported any bid for NATO membership.
After the Russian attack on Ukraine in February 2022, public support among Finns for joining NATO surged past 50%, fueled in part by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertions that Finland could not decide its own security posture.
With the Nordic country already heavily invested in its own defense and Arctic security, especially against Russia, the scales suddenly tipped in favor of NATO accession. As of 2025, Finland ranked ninth among the alliance’s 32 member nations in defense spending as a percentage of GDP, according to World Population Review.
Helsinki contributed 2.77% of GDP toward defense, not far below the U.S., which spent 3.2% in 2025. Ms. Valtonen emphasized that Helsinki’s share is rising quickly.
In her roundtable with reporters, the minister endorsed the U.S.-driven 5% of GDP spending target. She described it as the correct diplomatic move to keep Washington engaged against what she called the “existential threat” posed by Russia.
“The U.S. is not leaving NATO,” Ms. Valtonen said.
Finnish Defense Minister Antti Hakkanen took an even stronger approach. He and Ms. Valtonen spoke with a delegation of international journalists participating in a regional press tour sponsored by NATO’s eastern flank countries as the Trump administration weighs the U.S. role in the alliance.
“Russia is really preparing for a larger confrontation with the West now,” Mr. Hakkanen said. “Not just in Ukraine, but also the next phase.”
The two Finnish officials pointed to the niche capabilities of NATO’s Nordic partners: Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Sweden joined the alliance in 2024.
Mr. Hakkanen emphasized the need for increasing Nordic security cooperation with the United States. He noted reports that Russia has been moving its ballistic missile and nuclear arsenal farther north and said the Nordic countries see themselves as the de facto Arctic security guarantors.
“What we are outlining in defense in NATO and cooperation with the U.S. is a win-win situation,” the Finnish defense minister said. “We want to be a security provider, not a consumer, even though we have half of the NATO-Russian border.”
Mr. Hakkanen said he considers Russian nuclear weapons just across his border to be less of a threat to Finland than a threat that could “jeopardize U.S. homeland security” because of the weapons’ “long-strike capabilities.”
Ms. Valtonen made a similar point.
“We as the Nordics, we of course know exactly what’s going on, on the Russian side in the Arctic, and for instance, Russia’s main nuclear arsenal is placed in the Arctic,” she said. “Those weapons are not headed against Helsinki or Stockholm, but the goals are rather Washington, D.C., or New York.”
Focus on the Arctic
NATO’s Nordic members have been active at the top of the world for generations, and Nordic government officials often characterize their collective militaries as an Arctic force.
Finland and Norway have been pushing increasingly to reframe Arctic security policy as U.S. interest in NATO wanes. Officials say a top priority is countering Russia’s push to establish direct naval routes into the Atlantic Ocean via the Arctic.
Mr. Hakkanen said Finland’s niche capabilities are chronically undersold and that Helsinki views Arctic security as a shared U.S.-Finnish issue, not a peripheral concern.
He told journalists that he has been mildly frustrated that U.S. public rhetoric does not reflect what already exists between American and Finnish forces at the intelligence and military-to-military level.
“We have a mutual understanding about Russian threats through our intelligence cooperation with the U.S.,” said Mr. Hakkanen, highlighting Helsinki’s bilateral and regional intelligence agreements with Washington.
“We know exactly what Russia is doing, deeper inside the country or at the neighboring sites,” he said.
In response to questions from The Times, Mr. Hakkanen said a key driver of Moscow’s Arctic goals is to sow division among NATO member nations.
“Russia’s biggest interests in the Arctic are to have these clear positions separating NATO countries if there is some kind of a conflict,” he said.
Mr. Trump has suggested that the U.S. could withdraw from NATO at any time. The president said in an April 1 interview that he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the U.S. from NATO. He said the alliance hasn’t “been friends when we need them.”
The notion that the U.S. might not come to the aid of NATO countries that haven’t contributed enough to their own defense has been pushing alliance members along Russia’s border to strengthen bilateral ties with America and forge more local regional security partnerships.
“It’s beneficial for the U.S. and Europe, and the U.S. and Finland, especially, to have a lot of cooperation,” Mr. Hakkanen said.
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