Eighteen out of thirty-one NATO member states will reach the target of spending 2% of their GDP on defence this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday. Although Stoltenberg did not mention which countries fulfilled the NATO membership pledge to invest at least 2% of GDP annually on defence, there would be seven new additions compared to last year when only eleven states reached the threshold: Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
One new addition will be Germany: a defence ministry spokesman said on Wednesday that Germany had met the 2% target—for the first time since the early 1990s—and the government is allocating €71.8 billion for defence spending in the current year.
The announcements come as the war in Ukraine enters its third year on February 24th, with no end in sight, as nearly all member states—except Hungary and Slovakia—are eager to continue supplying Ukraine with weapons to counter Russia. On Thursday, defence ministers will discuss how to further strengthen NATO’s deterrence and defence, followed by a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council with the participation of the Ukrainian Defence Minister, Rustem Umerov.
Though overall military spending in NATO is set to have another record year, with European states investing a combined total of $380 billion in defence, Western European countries have not been keen on spending. Apart from the U.S. and Britain, all other member states that last year fulfilled the 2% criteria are located on the eastern flank of NATO.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump—who is widely expected to be nominated as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate—recently warned the United States’s allies it would not rush to defend them if they failed to live up to their spending obligations, saying: “You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.” Though Trump’s warning was nothing new compared to what he had already said during his presidency, European leaders are upset by his words. Jens Stoltenberg said, “Any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security,” while European Council President Charles Michel said it was a “reckless” statement that serves only Russian President Putin’s interest. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said Trump risked damaging transatlantic relations.
Though they may not have been as blunt, Trump’s two predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as his successor, Joe Biden, all urged allies to spend more. In fact, a bipartisan group of 35 senators wrote a letter to Biden last year, requesting urgent action on the matter, reminding him that the U.S. contributes more than any other member of the alliance:
Failure of many of our allies—including some of NATO’s largest members—to meet commitments of 2% of GDP on defense has the potential to undermine American support for the alliance, severely limits Europe’s ability to contribute to our shared interest in defending against Russia, and is a source of long-term instability in Europe, not to mention frustration for American taxpayers.
The 2% spending criteria had originally been an informal NATO guideline. At the 2014 Wales summit, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the leaders of the member states formally committed for the first time to spend the equivalent of at least 2% of their GDP on defence by 2024. At the time, only three countries, including the United States, were meeting the standard.
At last year’s summit in Lithuania, NATO members made yet another pledge, an “enduring commitment to invest” at least 2% of their GDP annually on defence. Though Trump’s presidency (2017-21) may have been perceived as “dangerous” by some Western nations, his tough approach has visibly strengthened NATO.
