How NATO nations need to sell the 5 percent spending hike to their own people

At the NATO Summit earlier this summer, NATO allies agreed to raise their defense spending target to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 — with 3.5 percent focused on hard security and 1.5 allocated to defense-enablers like critical infrastructure and cybersecurity. The move, pushed by the White House, represents a much-needed increase in spending to match mounting challenges to international security. Allies are already signaling considerable progress toward this goal. Following the Summit announcement, Berlin unveiled an ambitious plan to double its military spending by the end of a decade—a welcome, albeit delayed, commitment from Europe’s largest economy.

But the 5 percent figure belies the true cost. The gross domestic product of allied countries dwarfs annual national expenditures. So, while a rise from 2 to 5 percent of GDP may not seem like much on face value, but as a share of national expenditure, it is a massive ask, and one the people could begin to feel, sooner rather than later. 

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If NATO nations truly want to boost their defense investments, they must bring their own people along, and that’s going to require a coordinated public support campaign, heeding lessons from so-far successful initiatives by Norway and the UK.

To understand the scale of the new spending request, look to Berlin. In 2024, Germany spent 2.12 percent of its GDP on defense, allocating a little over $97 billion in defense spending. In the same year, Germany spent approximately $485 billion on total national expenditures. In total, as a share of national outlays, this accounts for approximately 20 percent of Germany’s national expenditures. All else equal, if Germany were to increase defense spending to the newly agreed target, more than 47 percent of Germany’s total budgetary expenditures would go toward defense. Some allies, particularly laggard spenders who do not meet the 2 percent goal currently, face even sharper projections.

Now, this is an imperfect metric. These pledges have a time horizon over a decade; GDP certainly will not remain stagnant for allies over this time; economic conditions and tax demands will fluctuate; countries may be able to count already-planned infrastructure development toward the 1.5 percent for defense enablers; and governments and their constituencies will adjust spending based on the state of the international security environment balanced with domestic priorities.

Also, some nations may be poised to wait out a Euro-skeptic Donald Trump administration. It is no coincidence that Allies agreed to review progress toward the 5 percent goal in 2029, a year after Trump’s term ends. 

But for the foreseeable future, the point stands. This is not just a reallocation of budgets, but rather a substantial overhaul of government priorities and an unprecedented shift in the mindset of allied societies who have long enjoyed the benefits of the transatlantic peace dividend. Representing the increase in spending as a share of GDP is political misdirection — one that may not play well once publics begin to feel the effects.

To realize this shift, governments are going to have to make hard choices. Capitals will have to consider tax hikes or cuts to social programs to account for the delta in defense spending. Most countries will look to run budgetary deficits to account for the disparity in resourcing. Resource-pooling and novel financing options, from Euro defense bonds to internationally-governed financial institutions, could offer a way forward. But questions around implementation and long-term viability remain wide open.

And it will be tough for publics to swallow such budgetary shifts. Allies, like Spain and Slovenia, are already sounding the alarm over such increases. Many countries may simply decide not to adhere to the new defense pledge. After all, not all allies currently meet the previous 2 percent of GDP threshold agreed to at the Wales Summit in 2014—even after Trump’s first term and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Public support for these spending hikes does not only raise political questions, but practical ones as well. Allies on both sides of the Atlantic struggle to match increased spending with industrial capacity. And defense industries are unlikely to accept the risk necessary to expand capacity if they believe politicians or publics may balk in the face of a steep price tag in coming years.

Both to shore up political support and quell industry concerns, the Alliance will need an effective messaging strategy that coheres strong and enduring political support across a coalition of societal stakeholders for politicians to bring to bear the money needed to finance such a defense transformation.

This will require a consistent and sustainable message across a spectrum of political voices. Allies, like Norway, which unanimously passed a historic defense pledge in 2024 that featured sharp hikes in defense spending through 2036, can serve as a pathfinder. By working closely with the opposition party, Stortinget’s leadership was able to craft a bipartisan plan that messaged urgency and unity to the broader public. Such political cohesion is persuasive to most citizens, and it also requires consistent outreach to a vast array of constituencies with a myriad of domestic priorities to reinforce the importance of such measures.

Additionally, these messages must touch on the needs and priorities of individual publics. For example, public support in the United Kingdom for defense spending is on the rise as British politicians highlight the importance of these initiatives for creating domestic jobs, bolstering industrial input, and growing challenges posed by hybrid cyber-attacks. By underscoring the broad societal benefits of increased defense spending has allowed the UK to bridge the gap between public opinion and increased deterrence measures—and such a strategy would likely land well across the Alliance.

As such, allies should root their messages in the 1.5 percent of the total spending pledge slated to go toward dual-use items that can elevate security resilience and provide material civilian benefits. While these infrastructure improvement projects will have tangible military applications, they will also improve societal conditions from technology investment to resilience initiatives. Citizens across the Alliance may not support such drastic increases in the defense domain (particularly for allies where the Russian threat is not as palpable), but most citizens will understand the importance of infrastructure development with dual-use capabilities.

To be sure, allies need to spend more on defense. But the Alliance is not in a place politically to reach this target. Governments must do better at public outreach and messaging campaigns now to cohere the support necessary to fulfill sustained efforts to ramp up defense spending in the next decade.

Kristen Taylor is an assistant director at the Atlantic Council’s Transatlantic Security Initiative, where she oversees portfolios on transatlantic defense industrial and innovation work.