Secretary of State Marco Rubio is assuring fellow North Atlantic Treaty Organization member nations that the United States considers the defense alliance indispensable.

Rubio made the comments during his address to the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, on Thursday. He dismissed panicked speculation that President Donald Trump was planning to pull out of the alliance.

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“As we speak right now, the United States is as active in NATO as it has ever been. And some of this hysteria and hyperbole that I see in the global media and some domestic media in the United States about NATO is unwarranted,” Rubio told his counterparts. “President Trump has made clear he supports NATO; we’re going to remain in NATO.”

The secretary of state tempered his enthusiasm with a warning that the U.S. wants NATO to be “stronger” and “more viable,” saying this is only possible if other countries commit to bolstering deterrence by increasing their “hard power.”

“Because if the threats truly are as dire as I believe they are — and the members of this alliance believe they are — then that threat has to be confronted by a full and real commitment to have the capability to confront these things,” he told the assembly. “[Trump] is not against NATO. He is against a NATO that does not have the capability that it needs to fulfill the obligations that the treaty imposes upon each and every member-state.”

The “dire” threats alluded to by Rubio are obvious — the long-term machinations of Russia and China.

European nations — some just a stone’s throw from embattled Ukraine — see Russian expansionism as their most immediate and urgent threat. The U.S., by contrast, is predominantly concerned with the growth of Chinese power.

A Department of Defense memo leaked to the Washington Post last month shows Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging U.S. military commanders to “prioritize deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense by ‘assuming risk’ in Europe.”

“China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario,” Hegseth wrote.

The Trump administration is pushing for NATO member nations to increase their financial contributions to the defense alliance from 2% of GDP to 5%.

It would be a gargantuan increase for European nations, many of which have failed to meet the 2% threshold in recent years.

Rubio acknowledged the enormity of the proposed increases, assuring the gathered foreign ministers that “no one expects that you’re going to be able to do this in one year or two.”

“But the pathway has to be real,” he said.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, a Dutch national, has warmly welcomed the U.S. emphasis on the proposed increases and celebrated recent strides in boosting contributions.

“When you look at the hundreds of billions of euros/dollars now rolling in in the last couple of months, this is probably the biggest surge in defense spending we have seen in Canada and Europe since the Cold War since the Berlin Wall came down,” Rutte said at the Thursday conference. “So that is good news, but still, we need to do more.”

U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker, a former acting attorney general, also attended the Brussels conference.

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Whitaker was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on Wednesday. He is a Trump loyalist who says he’s focused on bolstering the alliance’s geopolitical power by ensuring member nations meet contribution requirements.

In March, he assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that U.S. commitment to NATO “will be ironclad.”