NATO discusses major increase in defense spending across alliance
Joel Gehrke
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spurred U.S. allies across NATO to consider major increases in defense spending obligations, trans-Atlantic officials announced Wednesday.
“More countries are now spending at least 2% of their GDP on defense,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday following a meeting of alliance defense ministers. “So today, allies discussed how to build on the defense investment pledge and future commitments beyond 2024.”
The obligation for each government to spend 2% of its gross domestic product, a metric for the size of a national economy, was adopted in 2006 and affirmed in 2014, but most countries have failed to meet the target. Still, U.S. officials expect an even more ambitious defense spending agreement to emerge at the 2023 NATO summit in Lithuania.
“In Vilnius, our leaders will agree on a new defense investment pledge to ensure that the alliance has the resources to carry out these new plans,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters Wednesday in Brussels. “We had productive conversations about that pledge, and we look forward to working with our valued allies to ensure that we all do even more to invest in our shared security.”
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The failure to meet the previous target contributed to the acrimony within the trans-Atlantic alliance in recent years, particularly with Germany, but the Russian onslaught in Ukraine spurred Berlin and other allies to reconsider their security plans.
“Just spending 2% will not be enough,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Wednesday in his media appearance. “It must be the basis for everything that follows. The German government is debating that right now and will soon reach an agreement.”
Germany, in recent decades, has presented the example of the largest European economy with a security establishment that hesitated to develop a military force in proportion to that economic power. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz identified the Russian attempt to overthrow the Ukrainian government as a “turning point” in European history and German security policy, but Pistorius’s reported desire to add more than $10 billion to Germany’s defense budget by 2024 could face headwinds from other members of the government.
“The chancellor is totally convinced that we have to get to the point where the federal budget should attribute at least 2% to defense, but he also knows as a former finance minister that this cannot be easily achieved,” Scholz spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said Wednesday.
Poland, which has provided a staging ground for NATO’s cross-border aid to Ukraine, has blown through that target in response to Russia’s assault, according to Polish President Andrzej Duda, who said that Warsaw is “going to exceed 4% of GDP” for 2022. The Polish government has proposed a defense budget of more than $20 billion for 2023, in pursuit of a rapid upgrade of Polish military capabilities.
“We’re also procuring armaments from South Korea, first and foremost because we can get it delivered, immediately,” Duda told reporters following a separate meeting with Stoltenberg on Wednesday. “We will have big deliveries of this equipment this year. … We are speaking about tanks, then howitzers. We are also getting planes. So, we expect to get a lot of this equipment. This is going to strengthen significantly NATO’s eastern flank.”
Stoltenberg, a former Norwegian prime minister, said that allies need to “regard the 2% of GDP [pledge] as a floor and minimum” for future defense spending.
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“There is a full-fledged war going on in Ukraine, in Europe, and then we see the persistent threat of terrorism and we see also the challenges that China is posing to our security,” he said. “We need immediate commitment to spend 2% as a minimum because when we see the needs for ammunition, for air defense, for training, for readiness, for high-end capabilities. It’s obvious that that 2% defense spending is minimal.”