The NATO Defense Spending Canard

There’s nothing magical—or strategic—about the 5 percent number.

(Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/The Bulwark | Photos: Shutterstock)

THE LEADERS OF EACH of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s members are in Ankara this week at one of the most consequential moments in the alliance’s history. Russia’s war against Ukraine continues with no negotiated settlement in sight, and the lessons of that war are reshaping assumptions about readiness, industrial capacity, logistics, drones, electronic warfare, air defense, and ammunition consumption. NATO members are also confronting instability across the Middle East, growing competition in the Arctic, attacks on critical infrastructure, cyber threats, disinformation campaigns, China’s expanding influence, and uncertainty surrounding the future disposition of American forces in Europe. These are the issues that should dominate a summit of the world’s most successful political and military alliance.

But instead, much of the attention in Ankara has focused on how European leaders will manage President Donald Trump, his animosity toward the alliance, and his continuing demands for greater defense spending. The Wall Street Journal reported this week on a growing determination among European leaders, encouraged by French President Emmanuel Macron, to reduce their strategic dependence on the United States after repeated confrontations over Greenland, tariffs, Iran, American troop levels in Europe, and the reliability of Washington’s leadership of the transatlantic relationship. Other reporting has described European governments attempting to navigate an increasingly difficult relationship with the American president, who has questioned NATO’s value and repeatedly returned to a public discussion of the percentage of gross domestic product each member spends on defense.

Defense spending is not unimportant, as many NATO members neglected their military capabilities for far too long after the end of the Cold War. But President Trump’s fixation on percentages—and on money generally—has distorted the discussion of what an alliance is, how NATO generates collective strength, and what the members must do together to address the increasingly complex security environment they face. The spending debate has become a canard, not because nations should spend less on defense, but because the suggestion that a single fiscal measurement can determine whether a country is a good ally, or whether NATO is becoming stronger, substitutes accounting for strategy.

President Trump frequently claims that without his pressure, NATO members would not be spending what they are today. His criticism undoubtedly inspired difficult political conversations in European capitals, and he deserves some credit for keeping pressure on governments that had repeatedly promised to increase defense investment while failing to do so. But the history of NATO’s spending debate did not begin with Donald Trump. Robert Gates, who was secretary of defense under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, warned European allies in 2011 that declining military investment and the growing imbalance between American and European capabilities threatened the future of the alliance. After Russia’s seizure of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO leaders at the Wales Summit committed members spending less than two percent of GDP on defense to move toward that level by 2024. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 then accelerated that process dramatically. In 2014, only three NATO members met the two-percent benchmark; by 2025, every member had reached or exceeded it. Trump certainly applied pressure, but Putin deserves far more credit for Europe’s strategic awakening.

The debate over percentages obscures something military leaders and NATO planners have understood for decades: Defense spending is an input, but military capability and alliance cohesion are the outputs. A nation spending three percent of its GDP intelligently may contribute more to the collective strength of the alliance than another nation spending five percent poorly. Money matters, but what nations buy, what capabilities they develop, how ready their forces are, how quickly those forces can deploy, how long they can sustain combat operations, and how effectively they can operate alongside the forces of other nations matter far more.

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NATO’S INTEROPERABILITY AND UNITED strength don’t lie in thirty-two allied nations maintaining identical military forces. Instead, member countries develop complementary capabilities that can be coordinated, synchronized, and integrated into something far more powerful than the sum of their parts, while they each address various types of threats. The alliance depends on interoperable weapons systems, common doctrine, shared intelligence, integrated command structures, multinational exercises, logistics networks, compatible communications systems, and the ability to move forces across borders and sustain them once they arrive. It also depends on an often-overlooked strategic principle that is often described as “burden sharing” but more accurately termed “burden allocation.”

That distinction was visible repeatedly during my time commanding U.S. Army Europe. USAREUR was not an official part of NATO in peacetime, but we conducted hundreds of exercises with allies and with non-aligned partners such as Ukraine and Georgia in support of NATO. Those exercises demonstrated how a synchronized force works. One nation might bring cyber expertise, another special operations forces, another Arctic experience, another logistics capabilities, another aircraft, engineers, medical units, or tactical formations. None of those contributions looked identical on a spreadsheet or a military organizational diagram, but when integrated through planning, training, communications, and trust, they produced a force that could do things no single nation could do alone.

Estonia provides a useful example. That small nation could not field the armored formations, air forces, or naval fleets of NATO’s largest members, but Estonia has developed extraordinary expertise in cyber defense, digital resilience, and understanding Russian information operations. Norway is another example, as it brings decades of experience operating in the Arctic and North Atlantic. Other allies provide special operations forces, maritime capabilities, air defense systems, tactical aviation, intelligence platforms, strategic ports, transportation networks, engineering units, medical capabilities, or logistical assets. Germany’s geography and infrastructure make it indispensable for moving forces across Europe, while Turkey’s location gives it strategic importance in the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, and the Middle East. The United States contributes capabilities that few other allies can replicate at scale: strategic lift, intelligence and surveillance, global logistics, command and control, nuclear forces, space capabilities, and the ability to reinforce a theater rapidly with large number of conventional forces: tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, air defense, artillery. The United States also offers military and political leadership unmarred by centuries of European rivalries and squabbles, which is an often underappreciated key to NATO’s stability and success.

No percentage of GDP adequately measures those contributions. NATO’s strength comes from the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic relationships that allow sovereign nations to work together. Diplomatically, NATO provides a permanent forum in which thirty-two governments consult, negotiate, coordinate policy, and make decisions by consensus. Informationally, the alliance shares intelligence, counters disinformation, coordinates cyber defense, and develops a common understanding of threats. Militarily, it integrates forces, command structures, exercises, logistics, and capabilities across national boundaries. Economically, NATO membership strengthens defense industries, transportation networks, energy resilience, technological cooperation, and the infrastructure required to move and sustain military forces (which often also have civilian uses).

A percentage of GDP measures only the amount of money a government categorizes as defense spending. It says very little about whether that spending produces trained formations, deployable units, adequate ammunition stocks, modern equipment and infrastructure, resilient societies, effective diplomacy, reliable intelligence, or forces capable of operating with allies. A coordinated NATO strategy requires aligning resources with objectives. Increasing fiscal resources does not guarantee that alignment, nor does it guarantee that Europe or any European country will be less dependent on the United States for its defense.

If there is one nation that demonstrates the difference between meeting a spending target and pursuing a coherent national strategy, it’s Poland. For more than two decades, I watched Polish leaders warn their allies about Russian intentions while modernizing their armed forces, strengthening relationships with the United States and other NATO members, investing in new formations of air and ground forces, building operational-level leaders, supporting NATO exercises, and expanding the country’s ability to receive and sustain allied reinforcements. Poland’s defense transformation didn’t begin with the current debate over defense spending. Its modernization efforts began after joining NATO in 1999, accelerating after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, redoubling after the seizure of Crimea in 2014, and reinforced again after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, reflect a long-standing strategic assessment of the threats facing that country.

As of 2025, Poland spent 4.3 percent of GDP on defense (the highest in NATO), and it is undertaking one of the most ambitious military modernization programs in Europe. But Poland’s importance to NATO cannot be reduced to that number. It has purchased tanks, artillery, aircraft, missile defense systems, and other advanced weapons; expanded its armed forces; built infrastructure to support allied deployments; hosted American and NATO forces at the Bydgoszcz Training Area; provided extensive support to Ukraine; and become the geographic and logistical anchor of NATO’s eastern flank. I watched Poland become the alliance’s most forward-leaning member not because it cut a lot of checks, but because Polish leaders have connected threat assessments, political will, military requirements, industrial capacity, infrastructure, and alliance relationships into a coherent national strategy.

The United States currently spends roughly 3.5 percent of GDP on defense, failing to meet the standard President Trump has set for other NATO countries. Reaching the 5 percent metric would require hundreds of billions of dollars in additional annual military spending—roughly another half-trillion dollars each year, depending on the GDP and defense-budget figures used. Even if Congress and the president made such an extraordinary increase, the additional spending is not devoted solely to the defense of Europe or the requirements of NATO. That’s because our defense budget goes toward supporting forces and commitments in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Arctic, space, cyberspace, homeland defense, nuclear deterrence, global transportation, intelligence collection, military research, personnel and medical costs, and an enormous network of bases and logistical infrastructure.

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PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS REPEATEDLY encouraged NATO members not only to increase military spending, but to purchase more American weapons. Those sales may strengthen interoperability and provide allies with highly capable equipment, but purchasing weapons is not the same as building a sustainable European defense industrial base. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that modern conflicts consume artillery shells, missiles, drones, air-defense interceptors, spare parts, vehicles, and other equipment at rates Western industries have struggled to replace. NATO’s own agenda for the Ankara summit acknowledges this challenge by emphasizing increased defense production, cooperation, and joint procurement within the European defense industrial base as the means by which spending should be transformed into military capability.

Ukraine should make that lesson impossible to ignore. The battlefield has become a laboratory for the future of warfare. Ukrainian forces have demonstrated the importance of drones, electronic warfare, long-range strikes, decentralized command, rapid innovation, intelligence sharing, air defense, and the ability of soldiers and civilians to adapt faster than their adversary. At the same time, the war has exposed weaknesses across the Western alliance: insufficient ammunition stocks, inadequate industrial surge capacity, complicated procurement systems, vulnerable infrastructure, and continued dependence on American capabilities in areas that European allies neglected for decades.

All of this points to the reason for significant disagreement between the leaders attending the Ankara summit. But those who believe the current strains with Washington represent an unprecedented threat to NATO should remember that the Alliance has endured serious internal disagreements before. As President Macron suggests an approach independent of the U.S., he might want to remember that in 1966 President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s integrated military command structure, forced NATO headquarters and foreign military forces to leave French territory, and pursued a more independent national defense policy. France did not leave NATO itself, and it remained committed to collective defense, but the rupture was nevertheless profound. Yet NATO adapted. Political circumstances changed, leaders changed, relationships improved, and military cooperation gradually deepened. France formally returned to the integrated command in 2009.

That history matters today. Alliances are not sustained because every government always agrees with every other government, and they do not collapse simply because one member pursues policies that strain relationships or challenge existing arrangements. Mature alliances create institutions, military relationships, diplomatic habits, shared interests, and professional bonds that can survive periods of political disruption. The lesson from France is not that NATO can survive anything, but that political disruption should not become strategic destruction if members preserve the institutions and relationships that allow cooperation to resume under different circumstances and more mature leadership.

President Trump believes that 5 percent is a useful political objective, and there is no doubt that increased defense spending is unquestionably necessary; many European allies should have begun investing more seriously in their military capabilities years ago. But reaching a 5 percent of GDP spending goal is not a strategy, nor is it appropriate for all nations. If the Ankara summit is remembered primarily for another argument over spending targets, rather than for strengthening the relationships, capabilities, institutions, industries, and political cohesion that allow thirty-two sovereign nations to act together, NATO will have spent another summit debating the price of the alliance without adequately discussing its value.