Anchal Vohra
Europeans were barely getting their head around spending NATO’s official target of 2 percent of their GDP toward defense when U.S. President Donald Trump upped his ask to 5 percent. That caused some panic, but it was also easy to dismiss that demand as simply impossible. For that same reason, NATO chief Mark Rutte’s declaration that Europeans may soon need to spend up to 4 percent triggered even deeper disquiet across the continent.
Two-thirds of NATO allies upped their individual NATO spending to 2 percent of their GDP just last year, partly hoping it would assuage Trump. Total defense expenditure of member states rose by more than 30 percent between 2021 and 2024, collectively reaching an estimated 326 billion euros (around $340 billion). Last year, Germany crossed the 2 percent mark for the first time, Italy languished at 1.49 percent, Canada was at 1.37 percent, Belgium was at 1.3 percent, and Spain was at the bottom with 1.28 percent. France and the United Kingdom, the more defense-savvy powers of the continent, were at 206 and 2.3 percent, respectively. Even the United States itself was below Trump’s (and Rutte’s) mark at 3.38 percent.
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