U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth attends the meeting of North Atlantic Council defence ministers during the NATO defence ministers’ meeting at the NATO headquarters on June 05, 2025 in Brussels, Belgium.
Omar Havana | Getty Images News | Getty Images
A higher defense spending target for NATO members is looking likely, as the alliance prepares for its big bang summit later in June.
NATO defense ministers are meeting in Brussels on Thursday, ahead of a larger gathering on June 24-25, to discuss ramping up defense capabilities — everything from bolstering air and missile defenses to long-range weapons and ground force numbers.
But the specter of higher defense spending is likely to dominate Thursday’s meeting.
A defense target amounting to 5% of member nations’ individual GDPs “will happen,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said emphatically as he arrived for Thursday’s meeting, echoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s demand to lift the target of 2% currently required of member states.
“We’re here to continue the work that President Trump started, which is a commitment to 5% defense spending across this alliance, which we think will happen,” he told reporters in Brussels.
Hike now, but holdouts remain
Rutte and Trump have said NATO needs to immediately hike defense spending to the 5% goal — a figure that’s made up of 3.5% of GDP that should be spent on “pure” defense and 1.5% of GDP going to security-related infrastructure, such as cyber warfare capabilities and intelligence.
Defense spending has been a thorny subject for NATO members for years, and a persistent bugbear for Trump. Some members have far exceeded the 2% GDP target, while others have repeatedly fallen short of that amount in recent years.
Defense expenditure has sharply picked up among NATO members since Trump was last in power. In 2018, at the height of the White House leader’s irritation with the bloc, only six member states met the 2% target, including the U.S.. By 2024, 23 members had reached the 2% threshold, according to NATO data.
While some greatly surpassed that target — such as Poland, Estonia, the U.S., Latvia and Greece — major economies including Canada, Spain and Italy have lagged below the contribution threshold.
No NATO member has so far reached the 5% spending objective suggested by Trump or NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte. Some NATO members are likely to drag their heels to get to that milestone now.
U.S. Army soldiers take part in the NATO “Noble Blueprint 23” joint military exercise at the Novo Selo military ground, northwestern Bulgaria, on September 26, 2023.
Nikolay Doychinov | Afp | Getty Images
The U.K., Poland and Germany have already said they intend to increase defense spending to the requisite target, but their timeline is the key issue.
The U.K. government said this week that it aimed to increase defense spending to 2.5% by 2027 and wants to increase that to 3% of GDP in the next Parliament, by 2034. Germany, historically a laggard on defense spending that hit the 2% target in 2024, last week also said it backed the 5% hike ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s meeting with Trump on Thursday.
Spain and Italy, however, are seen as major holdouts against the 5% target, after only committing to reach the 2% threshold in 2025. Canada meanwhile spent 1.3% of GDP on defense in 2024, NATO estimates suggest, even less than Italy, Portugal or Montenegro.
Whether they like it or not, military analysts say it’s imperative that NATO members establish and maintain defense spending at 5%, now.
“NATO’s national governments — even those not within range of Russian long-range fires — must commit to Secretary General Rutte’s proposed new spending pledge of at least 3.5 percent of GDP on defense and another 1.5 percent on defense enablers like the industrial base, infrastructure protection and cybersecurity. This includes the United States,” Mark Montgomery, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan research institute, said in emailed comments Wednesday.
Summit where target could be decided
The need for higher defense spending, its advocates say, comes as the alliance responds to the threat of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as the need to confront “malign actors” such as China, Iran and North Korea who are looking to undermine the West.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Thursday that allies will decide on the spending target at the June summit, adding during a press conference that “there has been a total commitment by the U.S. to NATO, but also this expectation that European and Canadian Allies will step up spending. And I’m pretty confident we will get there at the summit.”
U.S. Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth (L) speaks during a joint press conference held with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte (R) during the NATO Defense Ministers’ meeting on June 05, 2025 in Brussels, Belgium.
Omar Havana | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Trump’s ambassador to NATO, Matthew Whitaker, also signaled earlier this week that the June summit in The Hague in the Netherlands “will be a moment to lock these commitments in.”
“This is not going to be just a pledge. This is going to be a commitment,” he told reporters Wednesday, according to Sky News. “Every ally must commit to investing at least 5% of GDP in defense and security, starting now.”
