Monika Sus
Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Signaling is a powerful tool in international relations and this is how I interpret the 5 percent of GDP defense spending target agreed at the NATO summit in The Hague: A strong signal to Russia that Europe and NATO are serious about strengthening their military posture. However, to be effective, signaling must obviously be backed by action—steps that will lead to a gradual but determined increase in the defense capabilities of European NATO member states. Two issues seem particularly crucial in this regard.
First, the need for coordinated and joint investments of European countries, by making full use of instruments recently introduced by the European Commission, such as the Security Action for Europe, alongside the greater fiscal space created by the reform of the EU’s fiscal rules. This flexibility can be used to boost military capabilities in response to NATO demands—provided such spending is embedded in a credible budgetary plan.
Second, securing public support for increased defense spending at the national level. This poses a major challenge for European governments, which need to not only justify the necessity of these expenditures to their citizens, but also clearly explain how they intend to fund them. Difficult conversations about trade-offs will be unavoidable, and they may easily become fertile ground for far-right and far-left parties across the EU.
Tobias Bunde
Director of Research & Policy at the Munich Security Conference
The new spending target sends a strong European signal to Moscow: You have awakened a group of sleeping midsized giants.
Rather than just hinting that they could use their far bigger GDP to outproduce Russia, Europe’s major economies are finally putting their economic weight behind European defense. Most of Europe is now following the lead of NATO’s Eastern flank, where countries have already raised defense budgets significantly.
Germany, of all countries, has announced concrete plans to meet the new target earlier than expected, raising its core defense budget from 86 billion euros ($101 billion) today to 153 billion euros ($179 billion) in 2029. The projected German increase alone is bigger than the combined defense spending of all Bucharest Nine countries on the Eastern flank in 2024. Money is no longer the problem.
But budgets alone don’t deter. Europeans must find ways to turn these new resources into real military capabilities, expand the forces needed to use them, and demonstrate the will to fight if necessary. All of this is easier said than done—and clearly much harder than agreeing on a new spending target. The awakened giants have little time to stretch their legs. They need to get to work.
Kathleen McInnis
Senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Throwing money at problems is rarely, in itself, sufficient. Translating these monies into actual capabilities is the real challenge—one that is going to require a serious mindset shift across the NATO alliance.
Old, sclerotic methods of defense and national security procurement are going to have to be shelved in favor of rapid acquisition processes that genuinely prioritize delivering capabilities to warfighters.
Industry partners must find better ways to communicate their innovative and cost-effective solutions so governments across NATO better understand new technologies that can be harnessed for national defense purposes.
Just-in-time acquisition approaches that deliver minimum necessary products must be shelved in favor of building stockpiles of critical assets, such as ammunition. It is necessary to aggregate demand across different allied governments so that countries can jointly procure key capabilities.
The NATO Support and Procurement Agency, for example, can step even further into its role helping nations manage complex purchases. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte should also establish an office in the International Staff—a NATO National Security Resources Board—that helps allies manage this enterprise shift by looking across the full system of defense production and national security resilience programs. This office could also identify shortfalls, risks, and opportunities for investment.
Jim Townsend
Adjunct senior fellow in the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS)
Yes, if NATO allies meet the defense spending goal of the equivalent of 5 percent of GDP—3.5 percent for hardware and 1.5 percent for military mobility and resilience—on time, they should be in a better place to deter Russian aggression.
This money will need to be used by allies to purchase the kit requested of them by Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and NATO defense planners, and their forces will need to be maintained at a higher state of readiness than they are now.
If NATO allies do all of this and their defense industries deliver the equipment on time, they will be able to credibly fulfill NATO war plans.
Anna Wieslander
Director of Northern Europe at the Atlantic Council
Yes, militarily it will. The 5 percent of GDP target is divided into 3.5 percent for military spending and 1.5 percent for defense-related issues such as infrastructure, cyber security, resilience, and support for Ukraine.
The pledge to reach 3.5 percent by 2035 should not be shocking to any ally. The internal defense review process at NATO related to the operational plans to counter a Russian attack showed last year that the alliance had to spend more than 3 percent of GDP on average to get the capabilities needed in place.
Poland, the Baltics, and the Nordic states are already reaching the target or have a plan to do it within a few years, so it is indeed possible. The German decision to reach 3.5 percent by 2029 leaves France and the United Kingdom with no place to hide.
The major problem with the pledge is not that the 5 percent of GDP target is too ambitious or impossible to reach. Rather, the risk is that by 2035 it will be too late.
Sophia Besch
Senior fellow in the Europe program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
NATO’s “5 for 5” deal—5 percent of GDP for defense spending in exchange for U.S. commitment to Article 5—was designed to appeal to U.S. President Donald Trump. But the creative accounting required to reach 5 percent carries risks. The 3.5 percent target is much more substantial. It is derived from NATO's regional plans to deter and defend against Russia.
There are caveats. First, GDP-based targets falter when the underlying economy does. Trade wars between allies are not conducive to a higher defense spend. Second, unity on the 5 percent of GDP target matters, but real output hinges on what the largest economies deliver. Third, input does not equal output. NATO's 20 percent target for defense expenditure devoted to major equipment encourages spending on capabilities, but filling gaps and increasing readiness takes time. Fourth, quality counts almost as much as quantity: Europeans must coordinate to avoid redundancies, reduce foreign dependencies, and enable military integration. And fifth, NATO regional plans count on a U.S. presence. If the United States redraws its military footprint, NATO’s current defense plans will need rewriting too.
This goes to the underlying issue: Meeting the Russian threat requires not just money, but strategy. The summit’s failure to produce a new Russia strategy—and scant discussion of Ukraine—shows how thin the win on spending really is.
Erik Brattberg
Nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council
The new 5 percent defense spending target may be a historic milestone, but it risks ringing hollow. Not all NATO allies perceive the same level of threat or share the same sense of urgency—something starkly illustrated by the eleventh-hour kerfuffle with Spain ahead of the summit in The Hague. Now, other countries such as Italy or Belgium may be tempted to seek similar carve-outs, potentially undermining the agreement’s credibility.
The 2035 timeline is also too complacent. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has warned that Russia could pose a direct threat to NATO members within the next three to five years, once it reconstitutes its military. That warning should compel allies to act with far greater urgency.
Beyond spending more—and doing so faster—European NATO members must focus on delivering real capabilities that can counter the growing Russian threat. Some countries already understand this: Poland and the Nordic-Baltic states are moving decisively. Others, however, are lagging behind.
The risk is that the 5 percent of GDP target, without a shared roadmap, will deepen fragmentation within the alliance and reinforce the trend toward coalitions of the willing. What NATO ultimately needs is not just a new spending pledge, but a common, enforceable pathway to meeting the capability targets that the alliance has already agreed upon.
Oana Lungescu
Distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute
You don’t fight with figures, but with capabilities. And 5 percent of GDP reflects decades of underspending on defense in Europe after the Cold War, which only started to be reversed in 2014, after Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.
The target is not pulled out of thin air. It’s based on the capabilities required to put into practice NATO’s new defense plans, including lessons learnt from Ukraine. There are big gaps, from larger land formations, thousands more tanks, millions of artillery shells, deep strike capabilities, to a fivefold increase in air defense to meet threats from missiles and drones. The target also includes cyber defense, resilience, and upgraded roads, railways, bridges, and other infrastructure to enable quick reinforcement. Moreover, it includes military support to Ukraine, which is NATO’s first line of defense right now.
Russia is expected to reconstitute its forces and pose a real threat to NATO within 2–5 years, so Europeans must move faster than a decade. They will also need to coordinate closely with the United States, which may redeploy some of its 80,000 troops in Europe to the Indo-Pacific. But NATO’s ultimate deterrence is its unity, and leaders were able to deliver that message from The Hague—at least for now.
Rachel Rizzo
Nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council
It depends entirely on whether European allies can both meet the defense spending target and make sure it translates into actual capabilities.
The division between hard defense capabilities (3.5 percent) and the rest (1.5 percent) on related expenses like infrastructure is a good steer in the right direction.
We also have to see if allied leaders are willing to expend the political capital necessary to convince their populations that upping defense spending is important, especially if it comes at the expense of spending on other social programs.
