Series: NATO: Counting Dollars or Measuring Value

The official 2 percent threshold, while mandated at the 2014 Wales Summit, has long been understood as an unofficial spending target for NATO members. According to 2017 estimates illustrated in the graphic, only four of the 28 NATO member states meet the 2 percent spending level while 15 are expected to meet it by 2024..

NATO breaks defense expenditure into four main categories: equipment, personnel, infrastructure, and other. In addition to the commitment to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense, NATO heads of state pledged at the 2014 Wales Summit to spend 20 percent of their defense budgets on major equipment.

As some allies and partners call for a broader view of the investments that contribute to collective defense, the CSIS study team examined security assistance spending by NATO member states and its select subset of European partners.

The CSIS report compiles NATO member and partner countries’ troop contributions across a range of military operations. Where data was publicly available and reliable, it measures troop contribution as a percentage of the total active duty force to normalize and compare between countries with militaries of different size.

Most measures of security contribution focus on investment. But states also forego economic gains in support of common security. The effect of enforcing agreed upon sanctions against a potential adversary is one metric that could be used to measure this sacrifice.

Conflict and instability to Europe’s south – in North Africa and in Syria – has generated population movements into Europe with which our allies have struggled. Some NATO members are bearing a particularly significant burden from the refugee crisis.  Managing the crisis is a significant security investment for them and Europe as a whole.