BRUSSELS, March 26. /TASS/. All 32 NATO countries have raised their military spending to 2% of GDP or higher, while three reached the 3.5% mark in 2025, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said in his annual report.
The document states that Russia remains the main threat to NATO.
TASS has compiled the report’s main points.
Growth in NATO military spending
- All 32 NATO countries have raised their military spending to 2% of GDP or higher.
- Three countries reached 3.5% of GDP in 2025.
- European NATO member states and Canada increased their defense spending by 20% in real terms compared with the previous year.
- The United States accounted for 60% of NATO’s total defense spending in 2025.
- Total defense spending by all alliance members in 2025 reached $1.412 trillion in 2021 prices.
- Of this amount, the US accounted for $838 billion.
- All alliance countries are expected to demonstrate that they are on track to increase military spending to 5% of GDP by the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7-8, 2026.
Main threat
- Russia remains the "most significant and direct threat" to NATO’s security, as well as to peace and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region.
Defense industry
- NATO expects member countries to rapidly ramp up defense production.
- A more complex security environment means alliance countries need to produce more equipment as quickly as possible.
Exercises
- NATO countries plan to conduct exercises under the Digital Ocean Vision program in the summer of 2026.
- As part of these exercises, participants will deploy networks of maritime sensors and maritime drones to act as a barrier against submarines belonging to mock adversaries.
- The NATO secretary general praised the results of the previous exercises in this series in 2025, which focused on countering conventional surface combat ships.
Champions in military spending
- From 2014 to 2025, Lithuania’s military spending rose by 537.4% to $2.9 billion annually, accounting for 4% of the Baltic republic’s GDP and placing it first among NATO countries in terms of growth in defense spending.
- Latvia took second place, up 369.4% to $1.46 billion, or 3.74% of GDP.
- Third place went to Luxembourg, up 359.6% to $1.2 billion, or 2.13% of GDP.
- Denmark came in fourth, up 265.1% to $14.5 billion, or 3.34% of GDP.
- Fifth place went to Poland, up 241% to $33.3 billion, or 4.3% of GDP.
- Military spending grew most slowly in the United States, up 12.19% to $838.3 billion, or 3.19% of GDP; the United Kingdom, up 26.7% to $79.8 billion, or 2.31% of GDP; France, up 27.8% to $64 billion, or 2.05% of GDP; Greece, up 45.8% to $6.8 billion, or 2.79% of GDP; and Croatia, up 65.8% to $1.7 billion, or 2.1% of GDP.