The research, carried out by Felix Gasper and Tony Lawrence, compared the spending plans of all NATO member states to see who was meeting the recommended minumum defense spend of 2% of GDP and who was not in July 2024. The authors described the results as "better news than we expected".
Poland is NATO's current big spender, laying out 4.12% of GDP on defense. The United States is in second place on 3.72%, with Estonia third on 3.43% and Latvia fourth on 3.15% – running well above official statements that "The defense budget in 2024 is planned [at] 2.4% of GDP" and that it will hit 3% only in 2027.
The only other country spending more than 3% of GDP on defense is Greece (3.08%).
Ten years ago, in 2014, Latvia was spending just 0.94% of GDP on defense. No less striking is the fact that in 2014 just 7.6% of the defense budget went on equipment (as opposed to wages, pensions, administration, R&D etc.). By 2024 this figure had increased to 37%.
The authors of the report suggest that the increasing differences in defense spending rates among NATO members could lead to future problems.
"The growing disparity between Allies’ relative defence spending—Poland at 4.12% and Spain at only 1.28%—suggests that it will be ever more difficult for them to agree on where any new guideline should be set. This, and the rather weak outcome on defence spending at the Vilnius Summit, indicate that it is unlikely that NATO will move to a 2.5% (or other) target in Washington," they say.
