NATO defense spending up for 3rd straight year

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that alliance members increased their defense spending in 2017 for the third consecutive year, amid complaints from President Donald Trump that only a handful of the 29 allies are meeting their pledges.

Overall, NATO countries — not including the United States — spent an estimated 1.45 percent of their annual economic output on defense spending last year, still short of the 2 percent goal agreed by national leaders in 2014 as a 10-year target.

That was the year Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula sparked fears in Europe that they were badly prepared for a traditional ground war with Russia, which was once NATO’s reason for being.

Lagging European defense spending has been a frustration in Washington for years, but in the Trump era, the numbers have taken on outsize importance.

Countries with shortfalls face threats from Washington, including the possibility the United States would not come to their defense. More recently, some of Trump’s economic advisers have said exemptions to new steel and aluminum tariffs might be granted only to those countries that spend more than 2 percent on defense.

“All allies are stepping up, doing more in more places in more ways,” Stoltenberg said as he unveiled NATO’s annual report.

The report comes as Britain says it believes Russia unleashed a nerve agent attack on its soil earlier this month.

British diplomats on Wednesday outlined their concerns about the attack to their NATO peers, but they stopped short of triggering a formal alliance response to the incident.

“The substance used is one of the most toxic ever developed,” Stoltenberg said. “The attack was a breach of international norms and agreements. This attack was unacceptable. It has no place in a civilized world.”

According to the latest NATO figures, only four countries met the 2 percent goal in 2017, down from five in 2016. Poland narrowly missed the cut — at 1.99 percent of its annual economic output — after its economy grew faster than its defense spending increased. This year, eight countries are expected to meet the goal: the United States, Britain, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Greece.

Under pressure from the United States, NATO members have pledged to create road maps of how they will meet the goals by 2024.

Before NATO members’ defense spending started to increase again in 2015, the overall figure had been falling every year since 2008.

The United States still spends the lion’s share on defense in the alliance — 68.7 percent of the overall total in 2017. That reflects the U.S. military role across the world as the foremost global superpower, a goal significantly different from the rest of the NATO allies.

Other countries have dramatically ramped up their spending, a reflection both of U.S. pressure that started well before Trump was elected and of a sense of vulnerability after the annexation of Crimea. Romania poured an extra 34.8 percent into its spending last year. Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain and Luxembourg also saw significant jumps.

Even though most countries have increased their overall spending, a handful have actually gone down. Belgium, a nation of 11 million that hosts NATO headquarters, cut defense spending by 0.73 percent last year. Its defense spending sank to 0.9 percent of its economic output. So did Greece and Britain, although both are still meeting their pledges.