NATO examines how to make itself ‘war-ready’ – Euractiv

July 10, 2024

NATO’s new defence plans, which require record military spending, will come under scrutiny when leaders meet on Wednesday (10 July) to discuss ways to boost the alliance’s defence capabilities.

“There are no free options with an aggressive Russia as a neighbor, there are no risk-free options in a war,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday (July 9).

“The greatest cost and the greatest risk will be if Russia wins in Ukraine,” Stoltenberg told an audience of politicians and high-ranking military officials in Washington. “We cannot allow that to happen.”

The move comes after senior Western military officials – including Germany, Poland and Sweden – stressed, NATO members must be prepared for war in the next decade.

Faced with a growing need to toughen up their rhetoric and show that they are serious about being able to deter Russia if necessary, NATO leaders in Washington this week are looking for a compelling deterrence story to tell.

They hope their message could carry even more weight on American soil as Trump could return to the White House after the November election, a move they fear could mean a possible weakening of U.S. contributions to support Ukraine and the security of individual NATO countries.

A long-term task

Last year, NATO leaders in Vilnius reviewed the Alliance’s deterrence and defence plans by adopting a specific new regional defence plan.

To this end, NATO members have focused over the past twelve months on providing troops and military equipment for the new programme.

However, the new plans currently do not have sufficient capacity to make the strategy operational, said several NATO diplomats in response to questions about the operational readiness of these plans, which also do not yet include the two newest alliance members, Sweden and Finland.

An additional To implement the plans, 35 to 50 additional brigades would be needed. Reuters reported.

“NATO currently has 500,000 troops at high readiness across the Alliance and this year put 90,000 of them to the test during the Steadfast Defender exercise, its largest exercise since the Cold War,” Oana Lungescu, Distinguished Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), told Euractiv.

NATO’s new defense plans would also require “more large land formations and, above all, more key capabilities such as air and missile defense, long-range precision fires, attack helicopters and logistics,” Lungescu said.

“This is a long-term, transformative task,” said a senior NATO official, adding that “it will take some time for the additional money to have an impact.”

“This requires sustained investment over a long period of time, with NATO countries working towards spending more than two percent of their GDP on defense,” Lungescu said.

Increasing pressure on people who spend too little

NATO leaders are expected to renew their commitment in Washington this week to meet the alliance’s target of raising defense spending to two percent of GDP.

Over the last two years, NATO – and in particular The United States – have pushed members to increase spending after years of underspending in the period before the Ukraine war.

However, European NATO members point out that Washington’s long-standing criticism of them that they do not contribute to burden-sharing within the alliance no longer corresponds to reality.

In a sharp increase – encouraged by bipartisan pressure from the US and Russia’s threat – 23 of 32 members are expected to achieve the spending target this year, with nSpending in the US increased by 18%.

The laggards include Spain (1.28%), Belgium (1.3%), Canada (1.37%), Italy (1.49%) and Portugal (1.55%), while other countries such as Luxembourg (1.29%) or Slovenia (1.29%) find it difficult to justify politically an increase in their spending.

But pressure will increase on those who spend too little, NATO diplomats say. Some say that those who meet the current target will “will almost certainly have to bear higher costs.”

“It was therefore clear to us that two percent of GDP was the minimum,” said the NATO diplomat quoted above.

“Poland is already spending over four percent this year, the Baltic countries over three percent. Other European countries and Canada must follow suit and invest more in forces and capabilities to ensure that NATO’s defence plans do not remain just on paper,” said Lungescu.

On Tuesday, the region’s defense ministers urged their NATO counterparts to go beyond current spending targets.

“Our voice was very clear: 2% is not enough (…) So we have to go to 2.5%, maybe even 3% of GDP,” said Estonia’s Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur. told an event in Washington.

“We need to invest more to expand our capacities,” said Pevkur.

Despite the pressure, several NATO diplomats told Euractiv they did not expect the target to move towards 3% in the short term, but acknowledged that it would require much higher investments to make NATO war-ready.

NATO’s 2 percent target currently does not take into account the human contribution to operations or military assistance to Ukraine, so some NATO members would like to discuss changing the calculation method.

The most important goal for everyone, however, is to spend two percent of GDP, and raising that target when a third of NATO allies are not yet meeting it is “a big challenge,” said a NATO diplomat, echoed by several others.

War economic offer

“The task of (this) NATO summit will be to make the regional plans feasible; in other words, to underpin them with the necessary capabilities,“, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters on Tuesday (July 9).

“We also need an efficient and more powerful arms industry that can supply our armed forces sustainably and reliably even in times of crisis,” said Pistorius.

In an effort to strengthen Western Production capacity of the defense industryNATO heads of state and government will pledge to work together on the new Defense industry promise, They are expected to agree on this on Wednesday (July 10).

For the plans to work, “we need more mass, we need more material, we need more modernization, faster introduction of new technologies (…) all of this will cost money, and it will cost most (NATO) allies more than two percent of GDP,” said the senior NATO official quoted above.

(Edited by Alice Taylor)