NATO Agrees To Spend 5% Of GDP On Defense

By Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS (Worthy News) – NATO military alliance leaders have agreed to invest 5 percent of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in defence by 2035, after Spain nearly torpedoed the deal by refusing to sign up to the pledge.

The deal, pushed by U.S. President Donald J. Trump, was announced at the end of the two-day summit in The Hague, which had turned the Dutch city and surrounding areas into a military fortress, with thousands of security forces patrolling the streets, military aircraft flying overhead, and warships at sea.

Rising GDP annually on defence and security-related spending over the coming decade is “to ensure our individual and collective obligations” are met, according to the brief final text of the Hague summit declaration.

The declaration said NATO member states would submit “annual plans” proving “a credible, incremental path to reach this goal,” with a more comprehensive review of the progress made in 2029.

The five-point declaration also includes a line reaffirming the 32 countries’ “ironclad commitment to collective defence as enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – that an attack on one is an attack on all.”

Additionally, the document promised further support to Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022.

The leaders noted that Ukraine’s “security contributes to ours,” but stopped short of directly condemning Russia or offering NATO membership to the war-torn nation.

LONG-TERM THREAT

However, their statement does include a separate line on “the long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security.”

It wasn’t easy to agree as Spain threw a last-minute grenade at the deal days before the high-stakes meeting, expressing opposition to the headline spending target.

It then opened a can of worms, arguing it had secured an opt-out. That prompted countries like Belgium and Slovakia to also push for more flexibility.

They noted that NATO countries spent over $1.3 trillion on core defence in 2024, up from about a trillion a decade earlier in constant 2021 prices.

If NATO states had all spent 3.5% of GDP on defence last year, that would have amounted to some $1.75 trillion.

Leftist Spanish premier Pedro Sanchez insisted Madrid would not need to hit the headline figure of five percent of GDP.

In a tough-worded letter, he wrote to NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that committing to a headline figure of five percent of GDP “would not only be unreasonable but also counterproductive.”

‘LEGITIMATE DESIRE’

“We fully respect the legitimate desire of other countries to increase their defence investment, but we are not going to do it,” added Sanchez, who fears it could mean cutting social expenditures.

He claimed Spain could meet all its commitments to NATO, regarding staff or equipment, by spending only 2.1 percent of its GDP.

The often smiling Rutte disagreed and, in the end, oversaw a compromise in which allies promised to reach 3.5 percent on core military needs over the next decade. They will spend 1.5 percent on a looser category of “defence-related” expenditures such as infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Multiple diplomats at NATO said the agreement had gone through with the approval of all 32 nations and that Madrid had no exemption.

Diplomats said that language around the spending pledge in the summit’s final declaration had been slightly softened from “we commit” to “allies commit”.

But they said the fundamentals of the deal remained intact.

Spain has been one of the lowest-spending NATO countries on defence in relative terms.

BILLIONS INJECTION

The country is only set to hit the alliance’s current target of two percent this year after a 10-billion-euro ($11.5 billion) injection.

Sanchez is facing a tricky balancing act of aligning with NATO allies and cajoling his junior coalition partner, the far-left alliance Sumar, which is hostile to increasing military spending.

Yet the deal meant a victory for Trump and marked the diplomatic credentials of Rutte, the longtime former Dutch prime minister.

“This is a stronger, fairer, and more lethal alliance that NATO leaders have begun to build,” Rutte said shortly after the meeting ended.

“President Trump made it clear: America is committed to NATO … At the same time, he clarified that America expects European allies and Canada to contribute more. And that is exactly what we see them doing.”

In the final summit statement, which was kept to a slim five paragraphs, military alliance members agreed to the new long-term defense spending goal. Leaders also pledged to expand defense production across the alliance rapidly

Rutte made a point of flattering Trump, praising him for pressing other countries to boost their defense spending and underscoring his commitment to the alliance. At one point, he even called him “daddy” when discussing the Iran-Israel ceasefire backed by the U.S.

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