Trump says NATO members should spend 3% on defense. Alliance official: ‘Yes’

PRAGUE, Czech Republic—Last week, Donald Trump said NATO member states should spend at least 3 percent of GDP on defense, up from the alliance’s 2-percent guideline. Defense One asked Angus Lapsley, NATO’s assistant Secretary General for defence policy and planning, whether alliance members could afford such an increase.  

“Yes,” Lapsley said at the GLOBSEC security forum here. “I think they can.”

Indeed, they must, he said: “Given the threat scenarios that we face today for most European allies, spending will have to rise considerably above the 2-percent floor if they're going to deliver the increases in capability and the better, usable, sustainable capability that we're asking them from now.” 

NATO member states are already hiking defense spending. This year, for the first time, a majority of NATO countries reached the threshold. But spending remains uneven. For example, Poland and Estonia—both on NATO’s eastern front—devote 4.1 percent and 3.4 percent of their GDPs, respectively, to defense, Portugal spends 1.6 percent and Spain just 1.3 percent.

“We go up to 3.7 in couple of years,” said Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s defense minister. “I know that I'm very unpopular regarding the farmers,” he said, alluding to protests in Poland in May over national defense spending. “I've said...2% is not enough. It should be 2.5 or 3% even.”

But other NATO officials noted that national security depends on more than armed forces. It’s also important to invest in police forces, network security, and what Gen. Chris Badia, NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander-Transformation, called “civil domains,” which can buttress intelligence and domain awareness. Such investments enable NATO multi-domain operations and help ward off cyber attacks and other non-conventional assaults.

“It's not only how do we…face an Article Five war. It's even more we have to get as a society…much more resilient,” Bedia said on another GLOBSEC panel. “And this is where multi-domain operations [MDO] comes in at the same time, because MDO means: orchestrate your five domains and synchronize with all the civil domains you have out there in in order to have a much better understanding situational awareness, which is information dominance.”

Ana Isabel Xavier, state secretary for the defense minister of Portugal, highlighted the large investments the country is making in counter-terrorism, maritime defense, and intelligence gathering, like building multi-purpose ships and patrol boats that have civil and military applications.  

“It's a fact that Portugal, in this moment, has not reached yet 2% of the GDP. We are trying to do it in 2029. But I think that all the discussions that we had are very clear on one thing. It's not only what do you actually spend, but how do you spend it,” Xavier said.