US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said NATO member countries are close to settling on a major increase in defence spending, with the possibility of raising the goal to 5% of GDP in ten years. At NATO headquarters in Brussels after alliance defence ministers’ meeting, Hegseth stated, “We are very close, almost at consensus,” in reference to the suggested new level.
The suggested target would be divided between 3.5% for military direct spending and 1.5% for defence-related infrastructure and defence activities. “This combination is a genuine and serious commitment,” Hegseth said to journalists.
NATO’s own defence spending target 2% of GDP was agreed upon in 2014 at the Cardiff summit. But President Donald Trump, who has since left office, frequently chastised many NATO nations, especially in Europe and Canada, for not contributing their fair share compared to the United States. Hegseth, a prominent member of the Trump administration, suggested that the higher target may be agreed upon at the next NATO summit in The Hague later this month.
While an official deadline is yet to be negotiated, suggested timelines in contention are 2032, 2035, or even 2030, as proposed by Sweden’s defence minister.
Poland alone currently qualifies for the set 3.5% military expenditure mark, spending 4.32% of its GDP on defence. The US has a spend of 3.4%, while the UK is at 2.33%, with a commitment to get to 2.5% by 2027 and to 3% in the future.
Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, admitted that Berlin would have to enlist an additional 60,000 soldiers in order to fulfill the new NATO goals. Germany, currently spending 2.12% of GDP on defense, previously hesitated to expand its military as a result of its history during World War II but has subsequently raised investment since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine.
