It was an idea that he already put on the table during the campaign and now he has made it official: Donald Trump will ask NATO allies to invest 5% of GDP in Defensethat is, three percentage points above the current objective. This was announced in his speech – via videoconference – before the Davos Forum. “It is a level that should have been reached years ago,” said the president of the United States. In fact, on some occasions he has warned that if this requirement is not met, he could consider removing his country from the Atlantic Alliance.
The reality is that increasing defense spending is already on the minds of almost all leaders, although NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, recently advocated getting closer to 4%as a previous step to that 5%. Of course, they assume that 2% can no longer be the ceiling, but rather “the floor” in terms of military investment.
But what Trump is asking for is impossible. And the president-elect of the United States was already talking about that 4% target during his first term, but now he has decided to up the ante, with all allies very far from that figure. For example, according to the data used, only Poland will exceed 4% (up to 4.12%) at the end of this year, while other countries such as Estonia, the US itself, Latvia or Greece may exceed 3%. That is to say, these countries would be well above the 2% target, so they would meet expectations, but they would still remain far from the new order launched by Washington.
Spain, in fact, is at the bottom of Defense spending in proportion to its gross domestic product of the 32 members. of NATO. This was made clear by the latest report from the Atlantic Alliance on spending forecasts for 2024, in which it is estimated that the Spanish Government will allocate 1.28% of GDP. Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg and Slovenia are also in that lagging bandwagon. These are the countries that at the end of this year will still be below 2%, and therefore also very far from that 5% that the United States now claims. Pedro Sánchez, however, responded this week to the new US Administration that Spain It would reach that 2% in 2029.
Most of partners of the Atlantic Alliance are precisely between 2% and 2.5% that London places now, so its investment in Defense at the end of this year is in line with an objective that, yes, now seems outdated. It would be above 2.5%, but only Lithuania would be below 3%. Therefore, the gaps are important and in a way have to do with the ‘closeness’, in many cases, of the war in Ukraine: Poland, Lithuania itself or Estonia see the danger nearby, and except in the case of Greece, the The rest of the southern countries are far behind in this classification.
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