On 25 June 2025, following a summit meeting, NATO announced that each member would commit to spending 5% of their GDP annually on their military and other security-related needs, by 2035:
Politico (Jun 2025): NATO allies have reached a deal on setting a new defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product ... During the NATO summit, allies will commit to spending 3.5 percent of GDP on "hard defense" like weapons and troops, and an additional 1.5 percent on defense-related investments like cybersecurity and military mobility.
Background
Twenty-nine countries in Europe are members of a military alliance with the United States, Canada, and Turkey, called the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). A criticism often directed at Canada and some of the European NATO members, by the Americans, is that they are "free riders" who don't contribute much to the alliance, instead relying on the US to bear most of the burden. The United States funds 66% of NATO (an increase from 50% in 1991). Americans across the political spectrum - including Obama and Trump, who have very differing political views - believe this:
The Atlantic (2016): “Free riders aggravate me,” he told me. Recently, Obama warned that Great Britain would no longer be able to claim a “special relationship” with the United States if it did not commit to spending at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense. “You have to pay your fair share,” Obama told David Cameron, who subsequently met the 2 percent threshold.
The Guardian (2018): The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, confirmed the 4% figure. "During the president’s remarks today at the Nato summit he suggested that countries not only meet their commitment of 2% of their GDP on defence spending, but that they increase it to 4%," she said. Sanders added: "President Trump wants to see our allies share more of the burden and, at a very minimum, meet their already stated obligations."
While equal contribution to a military alliance may be a fair point to quibble on, it is also a fact that one of the attractions to join a military alliance is that sharing the burden of defence, with other countries, helps save on military expenditure for some countries in the alliance. (In fact, this was one of the justification to creating NATO - after WW2, most European countries were economically and militarily devastated, and diverting their scarce economic resource to rebuilding their military would leave them considerably economically vulnerable. With NATO, the richer superpower members would bear most of the burden of defence, while the others could focus on rebuilding their economies.)
Moreover, often this is even expected by the economically weaker countries as joining a military alliance with a superpower often necessitates sacrificing their independence on foreign policy and making it subservient to that of the superpower(s) in the alliance, thus limiting their soveriegnty.
Now, most NATO members have agreed (at least on paper) to increase their military spending to 5% of their GDP. That seems extremely high, when you consider the military budgets of some countries (in 2024) that have been involved in actual conflicts or have genuine security concerns:
| Country | GDP % (Defence) - 2024 |
|---|---|
| United States | 3.4 |
| United Kingdom | 2.3 |
| China | 1.7 |
| India | 2.3 |
| France | 2.1 |
| South Korea | 2.6 |
| Poland | 4.2 |
| Turkey | 1.9 |
| Taiwan | 2.1 |
| Philippines | 1.3 |
| Iran | 2.0 |
| Pakistan | 2.7 |
In fact, in the list of the 40 countries with the highest military expenditure in 2024 (from which the above data is sourced), only 4 countries have allotted more than 5% of their GDP budget to their military (and even here, Israel, Ukraine and Russia are in war and exceptions as during a war military expenditure is naturally higher).
Given such valid concerns and criticisms, how are European politicians (of NATO member countries) actually justifying to their voters, the need to increase their country's military budget to 5% of their GDP?
