“Allies commit to invest 5% of GDP annually on core defense requirements as well as defense-and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure our individual and collective obligations,” the 32 leaders of the alliance said in a statement that pointedly did not specify “all allies” had committed to doing so.
President Trump since his first term has pressured NATO countries to commit more of their annual GDP to military spending as the United States looks to shift its attention from security priorities in Europe to the Indo-Pacific and Middle East.
NATO’s biggest-spending member, Washington, since early this year has insisted alliance countries must up their defense dollars from the 2 percent goal set in 2014 to the ambitious 5 percent. But the goal seemed to be a stretch given that nine of the 32 NATO member countries have yet to reach the earlier 2 percent goal.
With vague diplomatic language, however, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has claimed he delivered on Trump’s spending demands.
“For too long, one ally, the United States, carried too much of the burden of that commitment. And that changes today,” Rutte said at the end of a meeting of NATO leaders Wednesday.
To hit the 5 percent goal — which countries have until 2035 to reach — allies agreed to split the spending among different buckets to easier reach targets:
- 3.5 percent of the GDP dollars will go to “core defense spending,” such as weapons and military equipment
- 1.5 percent will fund defense-adjacent spending — including improving a country’s road or port infrastructure to better deploy forces or investing in cyber defense.
A review of spending is set for 2029 to monitor progress and reassess Russia’s security threat, given its ongoing war in Ukraine and overt threats to alliance members should they interfere in the conflict.
But several countries have made clear they will not be meeting the new targets as they are pressed by economic challenges — issues that could be made worse by Trump’s global tariffs. Among the most vocal of those countries is Spain, which before the NATO summit officially announced that it cannot meet the “unreasonable” goal by 2035.
“Not all allies are bound to the 5 percent target,” according to a statement from the Spanish government ahead of the summit.
Read the full report at TheHill.com.
