Five and dime stores are now a thing of the past in the U.S. But
if the reporting in the Financial Times is accurate,
President-elect Trump is signaling to NATO member-states that they must spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) annually on defense if they want U.S. support.
That is a big ask. As of June 2024, of the
32 NATO countries, eight were still far short of the
2 percent of GDP threshold. Only Poland exceeds 4 percent.
That may be sufficient in peacetime, but Russia and its Axis of Evil allies are knocking on the door. What’s more, the European continent is already engaged
in an active hybrid war with Russia involving espionage, sabotage, cyber-attacks, assassinations and disinformation.
Nor is it adequate for what is likely to come in the next decade. The Kremlin is rapidly preparing an even larger kinetic war against Europe.
Andrei Belousov, the Russian defense chief, underscored the urgency of the latter point when he announced earlier this month that Russia must be ready for a direct “military conflict with NATO in the next ten years.”
To get there and to win the war in Ukraine, Moscow announced in September that it was
raising defense spending by 25 percent in 2025, to 6.3 percent of its GDP. That is
1.5 times current U.S. defense spending as a share of GDP, and three times NATO’s present median.
Russia is on a war footing, but many NATO countries remain in denial of what lies ahead — or, as in the case of Slovakia and Hungary, they are prioritizing economic security over long-term national security.
Canada, a key NORAD partner, currently only spends
1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. Belgium, home to NATO’s headquarters, is even worse, spending only 1.1 percent.
Consequently, Europe is vulnerable. That goes double if Russia, in its eventual war with NATO, weaponizes European civilians by intentionally attacking hospitals, energy grids, schools and historic cultural sites, as he has all across across Ukraine.
Leaked NATO reports from last May are alarming. Brussels is estimating that NATO member-states are currently only “able to provide less than 5 percent of air defense capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.”
