Britain, alongside NATO’s 31 other member states, has pledged today to hike spending on national security to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035, as NATO chief, Mark Rutte, warned that Moscow could be capable of launching an attack on alliance members within three to five years.
Speaking at the start of a two-day NATO summit in the Netherlands, Rutte labelled this new spending target “a quantum leap that is ambitious, historic and fundamental to securing our future”.
To coincide with the summit, the UK government published its new “National Security Strategy” today – a document in which one line repeatedly crops up: “our world is characterised by radical uncertainty.”
In the report’s forward, written by Keir Starmer, the PM insists that the UK must “navigate this era of radical uncertainty with agility, speed and a clear-eyed sense of the national interest”, as he warns: “Russian aggression menaces our continent.”
The strategy addresses established but also emerging threats, stressing that technology is transforming the nature of warfare. Aside from warning that our ever greater reliance on digital infrastructure leaves us vulnerable to cyber attacks, it also points out that attacks on critical national infrastructure – such as undersea cables, energy pipelines and logistics hubs – may become more difficult to identify as hostile state activity since state actors are increasingly making use of criminal groups and hired contractors as their proxies.
The changing – or indeed broader – nature of modern-day security threats is reflected in the breakdown of NATO’s 5 per cent spending target.
According to the new proposals, alliance members should increase spending to 3.5% of GDP for “hard defence” such as tanks, bombs and other military hardware, while a further 1.5 should be devoted to broader security, such as protection or critical infrastructure or cybersecurity. The UK government insisted today that it is an “out of date concept of defence” to regard it “purely as the budget for the armed forces.”
The split target appears to also be a way of placating Donald Trump – who has demanded that all European alliance members hike their defence spending to 5 per cent – while simultaneously giving cash-strapped countries some flexibility on how they meet the target. Energy security measures, for instance, could even come into the broader 1.5 per cent spending.
Even with this added flexibility, it will be a challenge to get certain alliance members on board. While NATO countries have long been expected to spend at least 2 per cent of their national income on defence, only 23 hit that target last year.
There are big inconsistencies between countries, with ones closer to Russia, unsurprisingly, showing greater willingness in general to up their spending. Poland, for instance, spent over 4 per cent of GDP on defence in 2024, up from 1.86 per cent in 2014. Estonia and Lithuania spent 3.4 and 3.1 per cent respectively last year.
The UK spent 2.33 last year while Germany and France narrowly hit the 2 per cent target.
Southern European countries tend to be the ones who lag behind. Even in 2024, Italy and Spain’s defence spending amounted to 1.5 and 1.24 per cent of GDP respectively.
There are already signs that Spain is dragging its feet on this new and far more ambitious target. On Sunday evening, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez claimed that he had secured an opt-out from the 5 per cent pledge, something later denied by Rutte.
Conversely, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen expressed concern today that a 10-year perspective for hitting the 5% target was “too late”, insisting the timeframe should be “2030, at latest.”
Despite these internal frictions, alliance members were generally intent on talking up Europe’s capabilities today.
“Within a few years, Russia will find it will be very difficult to match [our] spending,” insisted Poland’s Radosław Sikorski, who added: “Putin has woken a giant”.
Caitlin Allen
Deputy Editor
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