Donald Trump was far from the only US president to admonish NATO for low defence spending to little avail, but the belligerent actions of Russian President Putin have galvanised NATO in a way the Russian leader did not foresee.
On 25 May 2017 Donald Trump attended his first NATO summit in Brussels as US president, with the occasion originally expected to be a celebratory one as the alliance officially opened its new headquarters building.
However, with Trump having previously labelled NATO ‘obsolete’ during his presidential campaign trail, there was apprehension among the alliance’s European leaders over what Trump would likely say in Brussels and, for those who feared a spoiling of the party, Trump did not disappoint. He both chided NATO members for not meeting their financial commitments, claiming that “23 of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should be paying and what they are supposed to be paying for their defence”, and declined to reiterate a US commitment to the alliance’s mutual defence pledge under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
However, notwithstanding his geopolitical naivety and ‘bull in a china shop’ lack of diplomacy, Trump had a point. He was also far from being the only US president to express frustration at the low levels of defence spending among NATO’s European allies.
The 2% pledge
Spurred by Russia’s stealthily successful annexation of Crimea in March 2014, the NATO partners endorsed a Defence Investment Pledge in September of that year that held them to a guideline first agreed in 2006 under which each nation undertook to spend the equivalent of 2% of their respective GDP levels on defence.
The NATO allies also agreed further measures at their 2014 Wales Summit, including the spending of at least 20% of their defence budgets on new equipment; the approval of a Readiness Action Plan, providing a comprehensive package of necessary measures to respond to the changes in the security environment on NATO’s borders and further afield; and the establishment of a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) – a new Allied joint force that would be able to deploy within a few days to respond to a crisis, particularly at the periphery of NATO’s territory.
However, official NATO figures for 2015 show that, of the then 27 NATO allies, only five – Estonia, Greece, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States – were meeting or exceeding the 2% guideline at that time. The United States, as usual, was at the top of the list, spending 3.58% of its GDP on defence in 2015.
In 2018, meanwhile, in the year following Trump’s harsh words in Brussels – words which he continued to repeat – NATO spending levels were not much improved. Six of NATO’s by-then 29 allies in 2018 – Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Poland, the United Kingdom and the United States – were meeting or exceeding the 2% guideline.
The ultimate spending spur
While NATO spending levels did incrementally improve over the following years, the ultimate catalyst for putting alliance defence spending where it needed to be was not Trump, but Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose wholesale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 changed everything.
Credit: US ANG
When Putin annexed Crimea in 2014, NATO certainly took notice and had passed consequent resolutions in Wales, yet certain factors appeared to dullen a stronger reaction. For one thing, the annexation had been bloodless, while some argued also that Russia having to maintain its Black Sea Fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, as a geopolitical anomaly caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union, presented a legitimate strategic issue for Moscow, notwithstanding the illegality of the annexation.
The Russian invasion of February 2022, however, which brought back the kind of high-intensity conflict that mainland Europe had not seen since 1945, revealed a brazen belligerence by Putin that imparted an unprecedented geopolitical jolt to the very core of the alliance.
Consequently, NATO spending now looks very different. On 14 February 2024, in advance of a meeting in Brussels of NATO defence ministers, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed an unprecedented rise in alliance defence spending. Stoltenberg announced that the European allies and Canada had added more than USD 600 billion (EUR 559 billion) in defence spending since the 2% NATO Defence Investment Pledge was made in 2014.
“Last year saw an unprecedented rise of 11% across European Allies and Canada,” Stoltenberg said on 14 February. “This year I expect 18 allies to spend 2% of their GDP on defence. That is another record number, and a six-fold increase from 2014, when only three allies met the target.
“In 2024 NATO allies in Europe will invest a combined total of USD 380 billion in defence. For the first time, this amounts to 2% of their combined GDP,” Stoltenberg added. “We are making real progress: European Allies are spending more. However, some Allies still have a ways to go because we agreed at the Vilnius Summit [in July 2023] that all allies should invest 2% – and that 2% is a minimum.”
Moreover, allies other than the United States are now heading the list of NATO defence spending as a percentage of GDP. While Greece topped the list in 2021 and 2022 with defence spending of 3.7% and 3.86% of GDP respectively – the result of a EUR 2.5 billion deal in January 2021 to buy 18 Rafale fighter aircraft from France (to which six more Rafales were added in March 2022) – the NATO spending table in 2023 was topped by Poland, with estimated NATO figures putting the country’s defence spending at 3.92% of GDP.
The uplift in defence spending among the NATO allies since the Ukraine War began has been driven my multiple factors beyond the need to bolster national defences to deter Russia. Most obviously, armoured vehicles and other weapon systems donated by the allies to Ukraine must be backfilled by newly purchased equipment, while the high-intensity warfare in Ukraine has also revealed that the levels of ammunition stocks held by the allies prior to 2022 were far from adequate.
The high level of Polish defence spending, meanwhile, reflects a significant recapitalisation of the Polish armed forces’ equipment inventory, including the purchase of major platforms such as main battle tanks (MBTs), air defence systems, artillery systems and combat aircraft.
A rejuvenated alliance
Yet the considerable uplift in NATO defence spending lauded by Stoltenberg is just one of a number of ways that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, along with previous hostile actions against the country, has rejuvenated the alliance.
Credit: USAF/Tech Sgt Jacob Albers
Ever since 2004, when the three Baltic states joined the alliance, NATO has conducted a rotational Baltic air policing operation to compensate for the fact that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania do not operate their own fast jet fleets. This was initially conducted out of Šiauliai Air Base in Lithuania, but in 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, a second air policing presence was established at Ämari Air Base in Estonia under NATO’s Assurance Measures to its Eastern allies. NATO also extended these enhanced Air Policing (eAP) measures in 2014 to Romania and Bulgaria using rotational detachments from various allied air forces.
Likewise, when Albania and Croatia joined the alliance in 2009 an air policing mission was set up over the Western Balkans that now protects the airspace of NATO members Albania, Slovenia, North Macedonia and Montenegro – all nations that have no fast jets (Croatia bought 12 Rafales in 2021, which began arriving in February 2024). Slovenia’s airspace is now permanently covered by the Hungary and Italian air forces, while the airspace of Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia are covered jointly by Greece and Italy.
Since 2017, meanwhile, there has been a special air policing arrangement for the airspace of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (Benelux) in which the Belgian Air Component and Royal Netherlands Air Force take turns providing fighters for quick-reaction alert duties.
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO has substantially reinforced its eAP operations across the eastern part of the alliance. This involved the deployment of more fighters, surveillance flights and ground-based air defence systems, and included additional alliance fighters sent to Poland just before the invasion occurred in a rotational deployment that remains ongoing.
Meanwhile, Russia’s actions in Ukraine have seen a substantial increase in NATO ground forces across the eastern region of the alliance. This enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) was first deployed in 2017, in the wake of Crimea being annexed, with the creation of four multinational battalion-sized battlegroups in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States respectively. However, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 the NATO allies have reinforced those existing battlegroups and established four more multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. This has brought the total number of multinational battlegroups to eight, effectively doubled the number of troops on the ground and extended NATO’s forward presence from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid the allies additionally agreed to scale up the multinational battlegroups from battalion to brigade size where and when required.
Beyond the already-established VJTF for potential reinforcement of their forward presence, the NATO allies in Madrid agreed a new NATO Force Model, facilitating a broader expansion of high-readiness forces, to number up to 300,000 troops, potentially available to the alliance where and when required.
At their 2023 Vilnius Summit the allies also approved a new generation of regional defence plans. These are designed to significantly improve the coherence of NATO’s collective defence planning with allies’ national planning of their forces, posture, capabilities, and command and control.
Meanwhile, with an increased focus on readiness, 24 January 2024 saw the initiation of Exercise ‘Steadfast Defender’: the largest NATO exercise since the last ‘Reforger’ exercise in 1988, near the end of the Cold War. Running until 31 May, ‘Steadfast Defender 24’ involves around 90,000 allied personnel and is taking place primarily in Finland, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and the United Kingdom. More than 1,100 combat vehicles are being deployed for the manoeuvres, including 166 tanks, 533 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) and 417 armoured personnel carriers (APCs), according to a NATO fact sheet. There are also more than 50 naval assets involved, including aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes, and more than 80 air assets, including F-35, F/A-18, Harrier and F-15 combat aircraft as well as helicopters and myriad unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The exercise is officially based on a fictitious Article 5 scenario “triggered by a fictitious attack against the alliance launched by a near-peer adversary”, according to alliance officials.
Neutrality not an option
In long-term military-geopolitical terms, one of the most significant effects of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine – and one the Russian leader would certainly have wanted to avoid – is the pushing of formerly neutral Finland and Sweden into the full embrace of the alliance. The two countries handed in official letters of application to join NATO in May 2022, less than three months after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Credit: NATO
Finland had been a neutral state since the end of the Second World War. Despite having fought the Soviet Union twice – firstly in the Winter War of 1939-1940 and then during the Continuation War of 1941-1944 – Finland had studiously maintained cordial relations with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and subsequently with Russia. In 1994, however, Finland joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme, joined the EU in 1995 and provided troops for NATO missions in Kosovo and Afghanistan. The country’s gradual move toward the NATO fold in subsequent years then became a moot point with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Finland officially joined NATO on 4 April 2023.
Finland’s accession to NATO more than doubles the length of border that Russia now has with the alliance, with Finland’s 1,340 km border with Russia now added to that of Estonia (294 km), Latvia (214 km) and Norway (198 km), along with Poland and Latvia’s borders with the Russia exclave of Kaliningrad (232 km and 275 km respectively). This is far from what Putin was trying to achieve when he ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine, presumably intending to create in a conquered Ukraine a pro-Moscow ‘buffer state’ between Russia and NATO.
Summarising the actual outcome of Russia’s action when speaking on the eve of Finland’s accession, Secretary General Stoltenberg stated, “President Putin went to war against Ukraine with a clear aim to get less NATO. He’s getting the exact opposite.”
Sweden, meanwhile, had a long history of neutrality dating back to 1812, but had joined NATO’s Partnership for Peace construct on 9 May 1994, in the year before the country joined the EU, and had, like Finland, been an active participant in NATO-led missions. While the pros and cons of NATO membership were debated in Sweden for decades, a national opinion poll in October 2014, in the wake of Crimea’s annexation, for the first time found more Swedes in favour of NATO membership than against it. However, Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine inevitably swung Swedish public and political opinion strongly in favour of NATO membership. Having applied to join the alliance alongside Finland in May 2022, and after ironing out outstanding political issues with NATO members Turkey and Hungary, Sweden officially became a NATO member on 7 March 2024. NATO thus marked its 75th anniversary on 4 April 2024 as a 32-strong alliance.
Meanwhile, even still-neutral Switzerland declared on 10 April 2024 that it has opted to join the European Sky Shield Initiative (ESSI): a German-led project intended to co-ordinate Europe’s air and missile defence networks. The ESSI was set up in the wake of European nations witnessing Russian air and missile attacks on Ukraine. Switzerland’s joining the ESSI implies that, while the country remains neutral, that would not necessarily remain the case in time of war.
A potential challenge ahead
It can thus be seen how Putin’s belligerent actions in Ukraine have not only galvanised, but indeed expanded NATO in ways that the Russian leader must never have foreseen, given the swift victory he originally expected in 2022. However, a potential threat to the alliance’s new-found purpose and cohesion comes not from Putin but from the potential prospect of a second Trump presidential term from 2025.
Credit: Office of the President of Russia
On 22 April 2024, after a week-long jury selection process, opening statements began in the New York ‘hush money’ trial, in which Trump has become the first ever former or current US president to be criminally indicted. This is the first of four criminal cases in which Trump faces dozens of charges, yet US opinion polls still have Trump and current US President Joe Biden neck and neck in contending for the next US presidential term.
At NATO headquarters the alliance’s European leaders are already scrabbling to come up with a contingency plan for what to do if Trump is re-elected. While Trump has rowed back on his pervious assertions that NATO is obsolete, his apparent fondness for autocratic leaders – in July 2018 he famously sided with Putin over the US intelligence services over questions of Russian interference in the US elections – and his opposition to militarily supporting Ukraine have NATO leaders on tenterhooks as well as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump has claimed without detail or merit that he could end the Ukraine war “in one day”: a plan assumed to involve the ceding of Ukrainian territory that would be anathema to Kiev.
The prevailing irony, therefore, is that, while a Russian leader has galvanised NATO in ways that could never have been foreseen in previous decades, an American one could be the cause of that new-found cohesion ultimately being unravelled.
Peter Felstead
