NATO agreed at a summit in The Hague this week to set a defence spending target of 5% of GDP for all its members following months of pressure from US President Donald Trump.

The agreement, which seeks to boost defence expenditure in Europe 'back to the levels of the Cold War,' as Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb put it, gives members of the security bloc ten years to hit the new target.

It's a major revamp of the way the transatlantic alliance calculates defence spending - and one that many analysts doubt is achievable for several of the bloc's members.

Of the 5% of GDP members are expected to earmark for defence in 2035, 3.5% will be dedicated to core military spending, with a further 1.5% dedicated to security-related areas.

This includes infrastructure - adapted roads, bridges, ports and airfields needed to host and deploy armies to a battlefield - as well as cybersecurity and broader societal changes and civilian programmes to prepare a population for conflict.

According to the new regulations, weapons and ammunition that NATO members supply to Ukraine will be factored into the total spend, making the new target slightly easier to reach. The targets may also be adjusted in 2029.

But many European countries have expressed concern that they will struggle to meet 5%.

Spain, meanwhile, has openly declared it will not come close to meeting the target, leading Trump to threaten to slap tariffs on Spanish goods to make up for the deficit.

The UK's current defence spend is 2.33% of GDP, amounting to almost $81.4 billion. If Britain were required to meet the 5% target today, the Government would need to set aside a whopping $192 billion.

Our interactive map below displays the current defence expenditure of all the NATO countries, both as a percentage figure of GDP and in monetary terms.

As a comparison, you can also see how much money 5% of GDP equates to today.

US President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte look at each other ahead of a family photo during a NATO leaders summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025

President Donald Trump attends a press conference following the NATO summit in The Hague, the Netherlands, on June 25, 2025

Following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO members agreed at a summit in Wales to commit 2% of their GDP to defence to help ensure the alliance's military readiness.

A decade later, in 2024 - two years into Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine - only 23 of the bloc's 32 members had managed to achieve the target.

Now, they're expected to double down even further.

The bloc-wide push to increase defence spending comes amid concerns over Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine and the Trump administration's desire to reduce Europe's dependency on Washington for defence and security as Washington turns its focus to China and the Indo-Pacific.

NATO allies dedicate a much smaller share of their economic output to defence than Russia but, taken together, they spend significantly more cash than Moscow.

Russia's military spending rose by 38% in 2024, reaching an estimated $149 billion and 7.1% of GDP, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The US is still by far the biggest spender on defence overall in terms - forking out a total of $967.7billion, equivalent to 3.38% of GDP.

These nations, which share a land border with Russia or its exclave Kaliningrad, contribute 4.12% and 3.43% of their respective GDPs to defence.

The UK by comparison spends around $81.4billion, equivalent to 2.33% of its GDP, with Sir Keir Starmer's government insisting it is on a 'path' to increasing this to 2.5%.

But no member of the alliance is close to spending 5% of GDP on defence at present, and some nations - including Spain, Canada, Italy and Portugal - are still lagging below the 2% threshold.

Spain is at the bottom of the pile, spending just 1.28% as of this year.

For Madrid, spending 5% of GDP on defence would mean boosting its annual defence budget by around €80 billion - nearly half the size of the Spain's entire pensions bill - a move the government is unwilling to accept.

NATO countries spent over $1.3 trillion on core defence in 2024, up from about a trillion a decade earlier in constant 2021 prices.

If NATO states had all spent 3.5% of GDP on defence last year, that would have amounted to some $1.75 trillion - in other words, hundreds of billions of dollars more.

Besides the focus on defence spending targets, NATO leaders in The Hague this week reaffirmed their 'ironclad commitment' to the alliance's collective defence clause, Article 5.

In recent months, Trump had sowed seeds of doubt about whether the US would actually come to the aid of any NATO ally under attack, conditioning American military support on whether said ally was contributing enough to defence spending.

With NATO's new spending pledge in the bag - albeit with Spain's refusal to meet it - a positive Trump told reporters that 'I left there saying that these people really love their countries.

'It's not a ripoff. And we're here to help them protect their country.'

An F-35A delivers a B61 gravity bomb as part of a training exercise

Russian T-90 tank fires towards a Ukrainian position on an undisclosed location in Ukraine, June 2025

Spain's government is preparing to block an agreement among NATO countries to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP just days out from a major summit, Spanish media has reported (Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez delivers remarks in Parliament, June 18, 2025)

It was clear that this week's NATO summit had been curated to appeal to the US President, with leaders perhaps having recognised that stroking the former reality TV star and real estate mogul's ego likely constitutes the path of least resistance in their dealings with him.

As Trump flew to the Netherlands, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte sent a text message gushing about him being on the verge of a great achievement and saying, 'Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.'

Trump gleefully plastered the message on social media, forcing Rutte to bat down speculation that he was pandering to the President and that his gushing texts made him look weak.

Rutte later suffered another gaffe during a press conference with Trump in The Hague.

As the US President went on a rant about America's involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, Rutte quipped that 'sometimes Daddy has to use strong language', in a pointed reference to Trump's use of a forceful expletive in an interview when chastising the arch foes for breaking a ceasefire deal.

Trump's appearance at the summit was brief - his engagements were limited and a simple, one-page statement was prepared to keep him happy and focused.

The approach seemed to pay dividends.

After the meeting, Trump said he had headed into the summit seeing it as a political chore, but left convinced that the assembled leaders love the alliance, their own countries and, mostly importantly, the United States.

He called NATO leaders a 'nice group of people' and said that 'almost every one of them said 'Thank God for the United States'.'

While Western leaders and defence chiefs met in The Hague, China was preparing to host defence ministers from Iran and Russia for a meeting in its eastern seaside city of Qingdao today.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in Russia's war with Ukraine, although Western governments say its close ties have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support.

Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov painted a bleak picture of a world seeing 'worsening geopolitical tensions' when he addressed his counterparts at the meeting.

'The current military and political situation in the world remains difficult and shows signs of further deterioration,' he said, according to a Russian defence ministry statement.

His Chinese counterpart Dong Jun also framed Thursday's meeting in Qingdao, home to a major Chinese naval base, as a counterweight to a world 'marked by intertwined turmoil and changes'.

'It is all the more important for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to play its role as an anchor of stability,' he said, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Recent fighting between Israel, Iran and the United States was also likely discussed in Qingdao.

Though Russia and China are both seen as allies of Iran, Moscow and Beijing refrained from offering anything more than diplomatic support to Tehran as it came under attack from Israeli warplanes.

This lack of support reflects both Russia and China's limited leverage in the region and reluctance to worsen relations with the US, analysts said.

'Public backing for Iran will come in the form of words, rather than deeds,' said James Char, an expert on the Chinese army at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

'Other than condemning the US strikes on Iran, Beijing can be expected to continue treading cautiously in the Middle East's security issues and would not want to be dragged into the region's security challenges,' he said.

Iran's defence minister will likely 'discuss with China the supply of weapons but I doubt China would agree', said Andrea Ghiselli, an expert in China foreign policy and a lecturer at Exeter University.

'It would be seen as provocative by both Israel... and, even more important for China, the US, with which Beijing is trying to stabilise relations,' Ghiselli said.

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