Europe and Canada Rearm at a Pace Unseen Since 1953

A number that says it all

NATO's European allies and Canada raised their defense spending by 20% in real terms in 2025 compared with 2024, according to data cited in early July 2026 by El País. That is the sharpest annual increase recorded since 1953, a figure that alone captures the scale of the strategic shift now underway across the European continent.

This massive rearmament push has driven combined European and Canadian defense spending above $574 billion at constant prices, while total spending across the Atlantic Alliance now hovers near $1.6 trillion. Since 2016, Europe and Canada have added the equivalent of an extra $1.2 trillion to their combined military budgets.

Why now, why so fast

This unprecedented acceleration stems from the convergence of several factors: the war Russia is waging against Ukraine, persistent uncertainty over the American commitment to collective European defense, and pressure from Donald Trump at the Hague summit in June 2025, where every ally except Spain committed to a 5% of GDP target by 2035.

That target breaks down into 3.5% for pure defense and 1.5% for broader security-related spending, including infrastructure and cybersecurity. It's an ambitious goal that would have looked unrealistic just five years ago, yet it is now becoming the new budgetary planning baseline across European capitals.

A first since 2014

For the first time since the Wales summit in 2014, all 32 members of NATO now meet or exceed the historic threshold of 2% of GDP devoted to defense. It's a major symbolic milestone, one that puts an end to years of criticism — much of it American — over the lack of budgetary effort from several European partners.

Poland now leads the rankings with 4.48% of its GDP invested in defense, followed by Lithuania at 4% and Latvia at 3.73%. These three Baltic and Central European countries are, in fact, the only ones already past the new intermediate threshold of 3.5% set for 2035.

The United States remains the heavyweight, but its relative share is shrinking

The United States remains responsible for roughly 60% of NATO's total nominal spending, with a budget near $980 billion in 2025. But that relative share is falling significantly, down from 72% in 2016 to around 60% today — tangible proof that Europe is shouldering a growing share of its own defense.

This gradual rebalancing directly answers American demands repeated for years across several administrations, but it was under Trump's pressure that the shift truly accelerated, forcing European capitals out of their traditional budgetary comfort zone.

Massive aid promised to Ukraine

The NATO summit in Ankara, set for July 7-8, 2026, is expected to confirm a commitment of €70 billion, roughly $80 billion, in military aid to Ukraine for 2026, with a similar amount planned for 2027. This continuity in Western effort sends a clear signal to Moscow: allied support is not about to run out anytime soon.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is also expected to announce what several observers are already calling a genuine industrial revolution in defense, with tens of billions of dollars in new contracts meant to revive Western weapons production lines that were long neglected after the Cold War ended.

Persistent tension over burden-sharing

Despite this undeniable progress, friction remains. Trump once again called the American contribution "ridiculous," comparing the roughly $999 billion spent by Washington to Poland's $44.3 billion, despite the considerable efforts Europeans have already made in recent years.

These comparisons, sometimes oversimplified, illustrate the persistent difficulty of finding common ground on fair burden-sharing within the Alliance, even if the overall trajectory remains unmistakably positive for transatlantic cohesion.

An unexpected economic boom

This massive rearmament is directly benefiting Western defense industries, whose stocks have surged remarkably on European markets. Order books at major military equipment manufacturers have never been fuller, creating tens of thousands of skilled jobs across the continent.

This industrial momentum represents an economic opportunity as much as a strategic one for Europe, which can now rebuild an autonomous defense industrial base, reducing its historic dependence on American suppliers for certain critical equipment.

Filling the gaps left by American uncertainty

According to sources cited by Reuters, Europeans have filled nearly all the gaps left by uncertainty over American defense plans, demonstrating a capacity for rapid adaptation that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, when Europe remained largely dependent on the American security umbrella for its strategic planning.

This gradual self-reliance, far from weakening the Alliance, is actually strengthening it, creating a more balanced partnership between allies capable of contributing substantially to their collective security rather than a one-way dependency.

Geographic proximity that demands urgency

The Baltic states, on the front line facing Russia, have logically adopted the most aggressive budgetary postures. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia understand better than anyone that their security depends directly on their own capacity for deterrence, combined with the credibility of NATO's Article 5 on collective defense.

This proximity to the Russian threat has transformed countries once marginal to European defense discussions into genuine benchmarks for the entire Alliance, inspiring other capitals to accelerate their own budgetary trajectories.

Finland and Sweden, the new strategic arrivals

The relatively recent accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO has also considerably strengthened the Alliance's northern flank, adding substantial military capabilities and particular expertise in Arctic defense and resilience against a directly bordering Russian neighbor.

These accessions, directly triggered by the Russian aggression against Ukraine, illustrate Moscow's stinging strategic failure: far from weakening NATO, the 2022 invasion accelerated its most significant expansion and strengthening in decades.

Budget trajectories under political pressure

The United Kingdom and France, Europe's two nuclear powers, face considerable internal tension trying to reconcile their growing defense commitments with severe domestic budget constraints, particularly around health care and public services — a delicate political balancing act for their respective leaders.

These tensions do not, however, call into question the overall rearmament trajectory, but they are a reminder that the effort demanded of European populations remains considerable and politically sensitive, requiring clear leadership to stay the course over several years.

Transatlantic solidarity in need of reinvention

These national budgetary challenges do not stand in the way of an increasingly solid transatlantic consensus on the need to maintain, or even accelerate, the pace of Western rearmament in the face of systemic rivals that, for their part, show no sign of slowing their own military efforts.

China, Russia, Iran and North Korea continue strengthening their respective military capabilities, making it all the more imperative that the West maintain its cohesion and collective defense effort in the years ahead.

A deterrent signal that carries far

This European rearmament obviously has not escaped Moscow's and Beijing's attention, and they see in this Western mobilization a clear signal: the aggression against Ukraine produced the opposite of what the Kremlin intended, unifying and militarily strengthening the entire Western camp rather than dividing or durably weakening it.

China, which is closely watching Western solidarity around Ukraine, must also reconsider its own strategic calculations regarding Taiwan, now knowing that a major territorial aggression could trigger a coordinated, sustained Western response rather than a token condemnation quickly forgotten.

Iran and North Korea, secondary but watched players

Iran and North Korea, both arms suppliers to Russia in the context of the Ukrainian conflict, also remain under close surveillance by Western intelligence services, which regularly document transfers of drones, munitions and ballistic missiles between these regimes and Moscow.

This cooperation among authoritarian regimes paradoxically strengthens Western cohesion, which increasingly clearly perceives the existence of an informal common front among its main systemic rivals, further justifying the acceleration of the ongoing transatlantic rearmament.

An increasingly visible political trade-off

This spectacular rise in military spending does not come without consequences for national budgets devoted to other priorities, forcing European governments into political trade-offs that are sometimes painful between defense, health, education and the energy transition — choices fueling vigorous public debates in several capitals.

Opinion polls nevertheless show growing public support for rearmament, particularly in countries geographically closest to the Russian threat, where awareness of the security risk far outweighs traditional budgetary concerns.

A necessary long-term education effort

Western governments will still need to keep clearly explaining to their populations why this sustained budgetary effort remains essential for years to come, or risk seeing public support erode if concrete security results are not quickly felt by citizens.

This democratic education effort is a challenge just as important as the financing itself, because no long-term defense strategy can survive without durable public support in Western democracies.

A new era of shared responsibility

The rearmament documented by NATO data and relayed by El País is not a one-off budgetary adjustment, but a lasting structural transformation of European and Canadian defense posture, set to continue well beyond 2026 based on commitments made through 2035.

This shift marks a strategic maturation long awaited by American partners, who have demanded for decades a fairer sharing of the collective security burden within the Atlantic Alliance.

The next test: Ankara and beyond

The Ankara summit will serve as an important test of the Alliance's ability to translate these budgetary commitments into concrete, coordinated military capabilities, rather than mere political announcements disconnected from operational realities on the Ukrainian battlefield and elsewhere.

If this momentum holds, the West could well emerge from this decade of geopolitical tension considerably stronger, with a defense architecture more resilient and better distributed among its members than at any point since the end of the Cold War.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

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I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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