View this post on the web at [link removed]

Another Trump administration, another inevitable dispute about defense expenditure. The discussion during Donald Trump’s first term was about whether and when European and Canadian allies would fulfill the NATO defense expenditure target of 2% of national GDP. This time it is likely to be about spending significantly more, with recent reports suggesting [ [link removed] ] that Trump wants to more than double the target to 5%.
In terms of merely raising the 2% target to, say, 2.5%, Trump will be pushing at a partially opened door. In response to the Russian threat, NATO leaders tentatively acknowledged in the summer, at their summit in Washington, that “in many cases, expenditure beyond 2% of GDP will be needed in order to remedy existing shortfalls.” Note the tentative nature: Only “in many cases,” not all, would an increase beyond 2% be justified. President Biden signed up to the idea of a partial increase in the NATO expenditure target, as did every leader at the July summit.
By December 2024, Financial Times reported that, partly in anticipation of Donald Trump’s return as U.S. president, NATO members were already holding talks about increasing the alliance’s target for defense spending to 3% of GDP.
By contrast, Trump’s 5% is extreme. It is deliberately designed to be unachievable. His real purpose is to shift, decisively and irreversibly, to Europe the burden of defending Europe, including Ukraine, against Russia, thereby disengaging the U.S. from its NATO responsibilities.
One of Trump’s distinguishing talents is to simplify and distort an argument, thereby setting the framework for debate in terms that suits his instinctive purpose. During his last administration, he succeeded in convincing almost everyone of a falsehood—that the 2% expenditure target was a NATO membership fee, akin to a golf club’s, which most NATO members owed but had not paid.
On the contrary, in terms of NATO budgets (that is, what it costs to make NATO function, including its elaborate military command structure headed and led by an American four-star general), the U.S. pays a mere 16% of the total, which is the same as Germany. Every NATO ally is up to date with its contribution to NATO. No one is cheating the U.S. But the impression remains that Europeans are failing to pay their dues, while nonchalantly playing golf.
As a result, there is confusion about what the NATO 2% target is meant to achieve. To be clear, the NATO target is for national defense expenditures, which allies had pledged to achieve by the end of 2024 (not immediately, as Trump implied), following Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. In other words, the 2% was a long-term target, intended to incentivize the reversal of the long-term decline in defense spending. Nevertheless, the 2% was still problematic because it is an entirely arbitrary figure.
The 2% had, and has, no relation [ [link removed] ] to actual military and equipment requirements for NATO’s collective defense. Its origins as a target are obscure. According to old NATO hands, it dates to the 1990s, when the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles and Baltic states were hoping for membership in the alliance. Aspirants asked for guidance on how much, as future allies, they should be expected to spend on defense. As the expenditure on defense for some Eastern European countries was then just below 2% of GDP, the aspirant states were given a target of 2% of GDP from NATO’s planning staff, sufficient to maintain what already existed and to build on it. So, the crumbling defense expenditures of former and recent Warsaw Pact countries became, in time, a hallowed standard for all of NATO.
So, what if the 2%, and potentially and eventually the 3%, or even 5%, are figures plucked out of thin air? The United States has always favored spending targets as a means of cajoling its allies to spend more on defense. In the late Cold War, for instance, the target was a 3% real increase in allied defense budgets, year on year. Moreover, the U.S. has always argued that its European and Canadian allies should assume more of the burden in defense terms.
In the absence of any other means of shifting the burden of European defense to the Europeans, the U.S. has little option but to argue for a demanding target and hold the Europeans to it. But the European allies do have other options. For a start the EU could develop a purely European defense outside NATO. Europeans, particularly in eastern and northern Europe, consider that this would be too costly and too dangerous if it meant a break with the U.S. So, for the foreseeable future, they will focus on resisting exorbitant demands from the U.S. for doubling European defense expenditures, and focus on gauging the real costs of increasing defense capabilities. That is why it is important for them to distinguish between the NATO GDP expenditure targets, which are a general means of setting long-term aspirational goals, and what it really and specifically costs to defend themselves within the framework of NATO. The two are different and distinct issues.
To repeat, the NATO 2% is arbitrary and irrational. European allies need not be fixated on such targets, particularly as most of them have responded to the resurgent Russian threat by increasing defense expenditure in real terms and significantly upscaling their defense capabilities.
For instance, Germany announced its famous “Zeitenwende” [ [link removed] ] (“turning point”) in February 2022, in the week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, heralding a significant and sustained increase in expenditure. Germany’s defense budget for 2022 alone was raised to around €100 billion (approximately $112 billion dollars) as an immediate boost to modernize the armed forces and address equipment shortfalls. The U.K., which already exceeds the NATO 2% target, is in the midst of a Strategic Defence Review to determine the roles, capabilities and reforms needed to meet the challenges and threats of European security and beyond. Similarly, France increased its defense budget and initiated a review [ [link removed] ] of its military strategy focusing on enhancing deterrence and readiness. The list goes on. Poland and the Baltic and Nordic states are all upgrading their defense capabilities, guided by the long-standing NATO defense planning procedure.
Such significant European increases in defense expenditure and military capability are not done in a vacuum or isolation. In 2023, NATO leaders agreed on ambitious and demanding regional defense plans to protect every inch of NATO territory, as Jens Stoltenberg, the former NATO secretary general, described their purpose [ [link removed] ]. All NATO governments at the time agreed unreservedly to these plans. Nevertheless, it is not fully clear, at least publicly, what these plans entail in terms of allied contributions, including that of the U.S., to NATO. But in effect, they are a return to the practice of collective NATO defense, which atrophied and virtually disappeared after the decades following the Cold War.
In current circumstances, NATO plans mean a significant increase in military readiness for all allies, with an emphasis on enhanced military presence in the frontline states, like the Baltics, Poland and Romania, and a capacity for rapid and formidable reinforcement by the major military powers (the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K., among others). And, once again, attention is also focused to the north, as the possibility of the Russian (and Chinese) breakout from the Arctic into the Atlantic because of melting ice flows is being taken seriously by NATO and its member states.
These regional defense plans were drawn up by an American four-star general—NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe. They effectively place European forces as the frontline of NATO’s defense, thus subtly shifting the burden of European defense to the Europeans within NATO. The American part in these plans is to be present militarily in Europe in sufficient, though not overwhelming, numbers to demonstrate the capability and determination of the U.S. to defend its allies in a crisis. Above all, the Russians fear the military power of the United States. The decisive integration of the U.S. within NATO plans may mean all the difference between deterring a future Russian attack and fighting a war with Russia to regain the territory of a member state that has already been lost.
NATO’s regional defense plans establish new and very demanding military requirements, needed by NATO but not yet fully developed or committed to by the allies. They may take years to fully implement. Fulfilling these specific NATO military requirements to counter the Russian threat is the most important task that the allies have set themselves for a generation. In response to President-elect Trump’s preposterous demands, Friedrich Merz, who is likely to be the next German chancellor following elections in February, put it simply, and best [ [link removed] ]: “The 2, 3 or 5 percent are basically irrelevant; what matters is that we do what is necessary to defend ourselves.”

Unsubscribe [link removed]?