NATO allies will meet in The Hague next week and are expected to agree to significantly boost military expenditure, but Madrid is reluctant.

NATO allies will meet in The Hague next week and are expected to agree to significantly boost military expenditure, but Madrid is reluctant.

Spain wants a carve-out from NATO’s likely future defense spending goal of 5 percent of GDP, the country’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said ahead of next week’s high-stakes alliance summit in The Hague.

“Spain will continue to fulfil its duty in the years and decades ahead and will continue to actively contribute to the European security architecture. However, Spain cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP at this summit,” Sánchez told NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in a letter seen by POLITICO.

Spain has the lowest military spending of any NATO member, allocating just 1.3 percent of its GDP to defense in 2024. Sánchez said earlier this year that Russia didn’t pose an immediate security threat to Spain.

    • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3913·
      2 months ago

      “It doesn’t impact us”. The most shortsighted, idiotic reason possible.

      • baldingpudenda@lemmy.worldEnglish
        64·
        2 months ago

        Isn’t that the same reasoning that allowed Hitler to take so much land at the beginning of the war?

        • Maalus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          32·
          2 months ago

          And the same reason that allowed Putin to take so much land too. Appeasement and the “I don’t care what happens in 10 years” mentality. People are ultimately shortsighted and having a detterrent isn’t popular when it is working (i.e. why do we need to spend so much, there wasn’t a war)

    • koper@feddit.nlEnglish
      202·
      2 months ago

      It’s an absolutely massive amount of money. And it’s not temporary while there’s a war in Ukraine, it’s indefinitely. All because Trump pressured the rest of NATO and wants more money going to his buddies in the weapons industry.

      Even without the US, European NATO countries already spend more than Russia and China (sources from 2024 and 2025). Just how much more should it get?

      • scarabic@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        2 months ago

        All because Trump pressured the rest of NATO and wants more money they signed an agreement promising to do so.

    • grte@lemmy.caEnglish
      151·
      2 months ago

      They don’t need a reason, really. 5% of GDP is moronic, the number alone is reason enough to pass. Not 5% of the national budget. 5% of GDP. Insane.

  • Pyr@lemmy.caEnglish
    31·
    2 months ago

    Isn’t the current requirement 2%? They want to more than double their budget?

  • glaber@lemm.eeEnglish
    1120·
    2 months ago

    Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union. I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically. They’ve proven time and time again they want to go it alone. They want to be bosses of the world and everyone to answer to them. Fuck them.

    • Laser@feddit.orgEnglish
      62·
      2 months ago

      Good, I wish NATO would disintegrate and European defence return to the competences of the European Union.

      “Return”? It was never really there.

      I don’t want my taxes to benefit the United States neither economically nor strategically.

      The 5% are not a membership fee that goes to the US. What the US most often got out of NATO was that they defined the standards and requirements, which at some point required American IP and American products to fulfill those. But in the end, the leverage they had was their huge investment in NATO that also benefited other nations; once the American investments end, other nations will fill that void (hopefully).

      Restricting such an alliance to the EU would rule out members like Canada, for example