INVESTIGATION: NATO's 5% of GDP target, a political bet through 2035

Introduction

NATO has set an ambitious course: raising defense spending to 5% of GDP for all its members by 2035, according to Forbes on July 1, 2026. This figure, hammered home at the Ankara summit in early July, sounds like a solemn promise. But an investigation into the actual numbers reveals a considerable gap between the stated ambition and the current budgetary reality of the vast majority of Alliance members. A ten-year target can be a strategic vision or a communications exercise; the 2026 figures allow us to start telling the difference.

According to Reuters on July 7, 2026, only five countries currently exceed 3.5% of GDP in core defense spending — a threshold itself lower than the final 5% target. The great Western powers, including the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, remain below this intermediate threshold, raising a central question: is this 2035 target a credible plan or a pious wish meant to display a unity the budgets do not yet confirm?

This investigation examines the political feasibility of this target in light of current budgetary trajectories, the fiscal constraints specific to each great Western power, and historical precedents of similar promises within the Alliance. It does not claim to predict the future, but seeks to measure, with the facts available today, the real distance separating the 2026 commitment from its fulfillment in 2035.

The Ankara summit, official confirmation of a long-standing target

A trajectory reaffirmed rather than invented

The Ankara summit, held in early July 2026, confirmed the trajectory toward the 5% of GDP target by 2035, according to Forbes. This is therefore not a new announcement but the reaffirmation of a course already set in previous years, at a time when the pressure of the war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year, continues to weigh on the strategic calculations of all Western capitals. Reaffirming a target is not the same as meeting it; that is precisely the difference this investigation seeks to document.

This confirmation comes despite considerable current gaps among allies, Forbes reports. The summit, it seems, did not produce any additional binding mechanism to accelerate the trajectory of the countries furthest behind, leaving the question of concrete implementation largely open for the years ahead.

The absence of sanctions, a structural weakness in the system

None of the sources consulted mentions the existence of a formal sanction mechanism for this specific case for NATO members who fail to reach the 5% target by 2035. This absence of real constraint is, from this investigation's standpoint, one of the main structural weaknesses of this collective commitment: a target without consequence for non-compliance remains, by nature, more fragile than a commitment backed by verification and reminder mechanisms.

This weakness is not unique to NATO: it characterizes most long-term international collective commitments, where peer pressure and public transparency of figures, such as that provided by the Reuters report of July 7, 2026, often serve as the only accountability mechanism.

Five countries already ahead, an encouraging but limited signal

A leading group that proves technical feasibility

The fact that five countries — Lithuania at 5.33%, Estonia at 5.1%, Latvia at 4.92%, Poland at 4.68%, and Greece at 3.65% — already exceed 3.5% of GDP, according to Reuters, demonstrates at least one thing: reaching a high level of defense spending is technically possible for an Alliance member state, including modestly sized economies. Technical feasibility is never the central problem of a budgetary target; it is always the political will to fund it that determines whether it becomes real or stays on paper.

Two of the five leading countries — Lithuania and Estonia — have even already exceeded the final 5% of GDP threshold set for 2035, nearly a decade before the official deadline. This finding suggests that at least part of the Alliance views this target not as a distant horizon, but as an immediate urgency already largely met.

A group whose size limits its symbolic reach

This group of five countries, though exemplary on budgetary grounds, represents only a limited fraction of the Alliance's total economic and demographic weight. Their lead, however real, is not enough on its own to guarantee that all thirty-two members will follow a comparable trajectory by 2035, particularly among the largest economies whose budgetary weight will count more heavily in the final collective average.

This structural limit is a reminder that the success of the 2035 target will depend less on the performance of these five already-advanced countries than on the conversion capacity of the great Western powers that are, today, furthest from it.

The great Western powers, the real test of the 2035 target

A gap of more than two GDP points for three major countries

Germany at 2.69%, the United Kingdom at 2.56%, and France at 2.22% show a gap of more than two GDP points with the final 5% target, according to Reuters. Closing such a gap in under ten years would require, for these three countries, a near-continuous increase in their defense budgets every year through 2035, a pace that has, to date, no documented precedent in the recent budgetary history of these three nations in a time of relative peace on their own soil.

Doubling, or nearly doubling, a defense budget in under ten years is not a technical decision; it is a societal choice requiring fiscal trade-offs that few democratic governments have, so far, fully managed to own before their voters.

The United States, a special case despite its power

The United States, at 3.17% of GDP, sits in a slightly less disadvantaged position than its European partners, but still remains below the 3.5% threshold already crossed by five smaller members. Washington, as the Alliance's historic leading budgetary contributor in absolute terms, has a different kind of leeway: its colossal GDP means each additional percentage point represents an absolute sum that few other members could mobilize, even at a much higher percentage.

This American reality complicates any direct comparison between countries: the same gap in GDP percentage does not represent the same real budgetary effort depending on the size of the economy in question, which nuances without erasing the finding of a relative American lag behind the 3.5% threshold.

Historical precedents of unmet NATO targets

The 2% of GDP threshold, a worrying precedent

The Alliance's recent history offers an instructive precedent: the earlier target of 2% of GDP in defense spending, set at the Wales summit in 2014, was reached by only a minority of members for many years, despite repeated reaffirmations at successive summits. This precedent fuels a legitimate skepticism about the Alliance's capacity to turn a 5% target into a widespread budgetary reality by 2035.

This historical parallel does not necessarily doom the current target to failure: the security pressure exerted by the war in Ukraine since 2022 is an accelerating factor the 2014 target did not experience to the same degree, which could alter the internal political dynamics of several Western capitals compared to the previous decade.

What has changed since 2014

Unlike in 2014, the current target of 5% comes in a context where the Russian threat is perceived as immediate and documented by concrete incidents, notably the repeated drone incidents on the eastern flank and the withdrawal of some allied equipment from Polish territory. This difference in context could accelerate the political conversion of the great Western powers, without, however, guaranteeing a pace sufficient to fully reach the stated target.

The fiscal constraints weighing on the great powers

National budgets already under strain

The fiscal constraints specific to Germany, the United Kingdom, and France — high public debt, pressure on social spending, moderate economic growth — complicate the prospect of a rapid and sustained increase in defense budgets over a decade. These constraints are not explicitly mentioned in the sources consulted for this investigation regarding the specific 2035 case, but they form a macroeconomic context widely documented elsewhere for these three economies.

A ten-year budgetary target never runs up against political will alone; it also runs up against, more prosaically, public debt and electorates with other immediate priorities.

The trade-off between defense and other public priorities

Every significant increase in the defense budget implies, in a context of limited fiscal resources, a trade-off with other public priorities like health, education, or the energy transition. This eminently political trade-off will largely depend on how public perception of the Russian threat evolves in each of the great Western democracies concerned over the next decade.

The war in Ukraine's role as a potential accelerator

A conflict that has already changed the collective trajectory

The war in Ukraine, now in its fifth year in 2026, has already produced a measurable effect on collective defense spending: European allies and Canada have increased their spending by roughly 90 billion dollars in constant 2021 prices since 2024, according to NATO data updated in 2026, an increase of roughly 20% compared to prior levels. A war lasting more than four years has finally produced what decades of diplomatic summits had failed to achieve: a measurable, documented budgetary increase.

This already recorded increase is an encouraging indicator for the credibility of the 2035 target, even though it remains, at this stage, insufficient to fully close the gap separating most great Western powers from the final 5% of GDP threshold.

A risk of relaxation in the event of de-escalation

Conversely, a de-escalation scenario in the Ukrainian conflict, or a diplomatic development that reduces the perception of immediate threat, could slow this budgetary growth dynamic in several Western capitals, where public support for military spending often remains correlated with the perception of a concrete, current danger rather than an abstract target set for 2035.

What regional dynamics reveal about the credibility of the target

The eastern flank, a laboratory for acceleration

The Baltic states, with their collective call to exceed 5% of GDP documented by Latvia's Ministry of Defense on March 27, 2026, show that rapid acceleration toward the final target remains possible when the perception of threat is sharp and immediate enough. This Baltic case is an empirical counterexample to the inertia generally observed among the great Western powers, further geographically removed from the front.

This contrast between the eastern flank and Western Europe, or even North America, illustrates a simple geopolitical reality: perceived proximity to the threat remains, empirically, the most decisive factor in the speed of budgetary adjustment, more so than the formal targets collectively set at Alliance summits.

The Baltic drone wall, proof of a budgetary conversion already underway

The Baltic drone wall project, estimated at roughly one billion euros and targeting an initial operational capability by late 2026, concretely illustrates how a high budgetary target can translate into tangible projects when local political will is strong enough. This type of concrete materialization is, at this stage, missing among the great Western powers for projects of comparable scale relative to their own GDP.

What this investigation cannot yet settle

The fundamental uncertainty over the 2035 horizon

This investigation cannot, at this stage, confirm or rule out with certainty that the 5% of GDP target will be actually reached by all NATO members by 2035. The data available in 2026 only allow us to measure a starting point and a still very uneven trajectory among members, without guaranteeing the continuity of this trajectory over the remaining nine years. An honest investigation into a ten-year target must resist the temptation to predict its outcome; it can only rigorously measure the distance already covered and what remains to be done.

This uncertainty is not a weakness of the method, but an inherent feature of any political target set over such a long horizon, in a geopolitical context — the war in Ukraine, tensions on the eastern flank — whose evolution itself remains largely unpredictable at this stage.

The next milestones to watch

The next NATO summits, along with the Alliance's annual reports on defense spending, will be the most reliable milestones for tracking the real evolution of this trajectory in the years ahead. The year-over-year comparison of the percentage of GDP each great Western power devotes to defense will make it possible to measure whether the commitment made in Ankara translates, concretely, into voted budgets rather than mere declarations reaffirmed from summit to summit.

The demographic weight of laggards in the collective average

A combined population far exceeding that of the top performers

The four great powers furthest behind — Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States — alone represent a combined population far larger than that of the five countries already leading, of which Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia rank among the Alliance's least populous states. This demographic and economic imbalance means NATO's real weighted average defense spending remains much closer to the level of the great powers than to that of the Baltic states.

This arithmetic reality explains why the individual performance of five countries, however exemplary, is not statistically enough to bring the entire Alliance closer to the final 5% of GDP target until the largest economies have also begun a comparable convergence trajectory.

The internal debates expected within Western parliaments

An annual budget battle rather than a single decision

Unlike a single, definitive decision, reaching the 5% of GDP target by 2035 for Germany, France, or the United Kingdom will require a succession of annual budget debates before their respective parliaments, where each increase will have to be voted separately, in a political context likely to shift significantly from one year to the next depending on election results.

This parliamentary dimension introduces a structural uncertainty factor that does not exist in the same way in the Baltic states, where political consensus on the need to increase defense spending appears, at this stage, more broadly shared among the main political parties.

The role of public opinion in these trade-offs

The evolution of public opinion regarding perceptions of the Russian threat will play a decisive role in the outcome of these successive parliamentary debates. Public opinion convinced of the security urgency makes it easier to pass rising defense budgets, while more skeptical opinion, or opinion preoccupied with other domestic economic priorities, could slow or block certain steps of this trajectory toward 2035.

Defense industries, a possible bottleneck

Production capacity that does not always keep pace with budgets

Even if the necessary budgets were fully voted, reaching the 5% of GDP target could potentially run into another obstacle: the real industrial capacity of European and North American defense production chains to absorb such a demand increase without excessive delivery delays. This industrial constraint, documented elsewhere for air defense systems delivered to Ukraine, illustrates the structural limits any rapid budgetary increase runs into.

This industrial bottleneck could, paradoxically, slow the conversion of voted budgets into actually delivered military capabilities, even in a scenario where the political will of the great Western powers fully aligned with the 2035 target.

The PURL program, a parallel indicator of collective will

A mechanism already testing allies' real commitment

The PURL program, which had mobilized more than 6 billion dollars by June 2026 to fund purchases of American equipment for Ukraine, is a useful parallel indicator for measuring allies' real willingness to financially back their commitment to collective security, beyond national GDP percentage figures alone.

The participation of twenty-one allies and two partners in this mechanism, according to NATO data updated on July 13, 2026, suggests a broader collective will than national defense spending figures alone might suggest, which partially nuances the more pessimistic picture drawn by a strict comparison of GDP percentages.

What a failure of this target would mean for NATO's credibility

A precedent that would fuel doubt about other commitments

A failure, even partial, to reach the 5% of GDP target by 2035 would risk fueling broader doubt about NATO's ability to turn its collective commitments into budgetary reality, with possible repercussions on the credibility of other commitments made by the Alliance, particularly regarding collective defense against potential aggression.

This institutional credibility risk is, according to this investigation, one of the most significant stakes of the current period for the Alliance, at a time when deterrence against Russia relies heavily on Moscow's perception of the real solidity of the Western collective commitment.

Conclusion

The 5% of GDP by 2035 target, confirmed at the Ankara summit, remains at this stage a political bet more than a budgetary certainty. Five countries, including Lithuania and Estonia, have already exceeded this final threshold, proving its technical feasibility. But the great Western powers — Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and to a lesser extent the United States — remain, according to Reuters, more than two GDP points away from this target, with less than a decade to close the gap.

This investigation does not claim to predict the outcome of this bet. It establishes, with the facts available in 2026, that the current trajectory, if it continues at the pace observed since 2024, remains insufficient to fully reach the stated target without a significant acceleration in the coming decade. A 2035 target cannot be judged in 2026; but a target that, in 2026, counts only five top performers out of thirty-two members deserves to be watched with a vigilance that goes beyond simple faith in summit communiqués.

Signature

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's Transparency Box

Editorial positioning

This investigation is written from an openly held angle preference, pro-Western, that values collective deterrence against Russia without treating the budgetary lag of Germany, the United Kingdom, France, or the United States as a moral judgment on their overall strategic commitment to the Alliance.

Methodology and sources

This investigation relies on Reuters figures from July 7, 2026 on defense spending by country, on a Forbes article from July 1, 2026 on the Ankara summit, and on official NATO data regarding the 5% of GDP commitment. The Baltic context relies on the statement from Latvia's Ministry of Defense of March 27, 2026 and on a Defence Ukraine article.

Nature of the analysis

This piece distinguishes between verifiable official figures, unguaranteed projections regarding the 2035 horizon, and the columnist's personal analysis of the political credibility of this target, clearly identified by the tone of the text, without claiming a certainty the available facts do not allow us to establish.

Sources

Primary sources

Reuters — Gaps between allies on defense spending — July 7, 2026

NATO — Official 5% of GDP commitment

Latvian Ministry of Defense — Joint statement — March 27, 2026

Secondary sources

Forbes — The 5% of GDP target at the Ankara summit — July 1, 2026

Defence Ukraine — The Baltic drone wall

NATO — NATO's support for Ukraine and the PURL program — updated July 13, 2026