NATO hawks push for raising 2% spending target after Washington summit

A growing number of NATO countries are looking to increase the alliance’s flagship target for all members to spend 2% of their GDP on defense in the face of the growing Russian threat on the alliance’s Eastern flank, Report informs referring to Semafor.

However, they concede that such a commitment — which comes as many member states are coming to the conclusion that they will need to ramp up their defense spending — looks out of reach at this week’s summit in Washington.

“We are starting to see a move towards a new pledge at the Hague summit,” the Estonian Undersecretary for Defense Policy Tuuli Duneton told Semafor, referring to the alliance’s planned 2025 meeting. “We would like to see 2.5 or 3%.”

While US and European officials have been saying for months that bumping the defense pledge is not on the agenda for this week’s Washington summit, “more and more defense ministers are saying that 2% is not enough,” Duneton said.

Even so, increasing the target would be politically contentious when almost a third of the NATO members are yet to hit the existing 2% target, which the alliance had committed to hit by this year.