Research
NATO's free-rider problem has largely resolved itself under the pressure of Russian aggression: 23 of 32 allies now meet the 2% GDP target, collective spending has reached 2.71%, and the 2025 Hague Summit produced a binding commitment to 5% by 2035. The core tension, however, is whether these numbers mean anything — the 2% metric has no capability benchmarks attached, the new 1.5% "security-related" category has no agreed accounting standard, and compliance figures obscure serious misalignments like Greece spending against Turkey or Türkiye operating Russian weapons systems while meeting its target. The deeper unresolved question is durability: whether the spending surge reflects a permanent Zeitenwende or a crisis-driven spike that will fade as threat salience recedes, following the same post-Cold War pattern it reversed.
The cut-off date for information used in this report was 3 June 2025. Figures for 2024 and 2025 are estimates. North Atlantic Treaty Organisation – Organisation ...
Previous studies have offered static evidence of free-riding behavior in military alliances; however, dynamic evidence remains largely ...
In total, NATO countries now meet the 2 percent target, together spending 2.71 percent of their GDP on defense. This creates positive momentum ...
Many NATO allies and partners are among those most affected by the financial crisis that first gripped global capital markets in late 2008.
Allied defense spending is increasingly converging towards the target of equal burden-sharing, demonstrating a commitment to collective ...
The Transatlantic Security Initiative's NATO defense spending tracker delves into data to analyze current defense spending trends.
Common funding is an important element of burden-sharing, demonstrating the effective sharing of responsibilities, risks and benefits among ...
The direct costs of US participation in NATO are far more modest than the nearly $900 billion in national security spending just authorized by Congress.
We committed to investing 5% of GDP annually in defence by 2035. That includes 3.5% to fund core defence and to meet the ambitious new NATO. Capability Targets ...
At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, Allies made a commitment to investing 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually on core defence ...
This article summarizes the project's analysis of factors that could affect Alliance cohesion in the future.
A strong push for European autonomy could inadvertently weaken the vital transatlantic bond if it is perceived as an attempt to decouple from ...
Allies agree that this 5% commitment will comprise two essential categories of defence investment. Allies will allocate at least 3.5% of GDP ...
An intuitive approach to analyzing free riding is treating it as a systematic pattern of spatial interdependence between the allies.
This could start by ditching the notion of collective defense as a “burden” and adopt the language of “responsibility sharing” instead.
This report examines six key parameters that can be used for a realistic comparison of military capabilities between NATO countries and ...
NATO burden sharing is no longer just about fair funding. It is a strategic crisis over whether Europe can deter Russia without total ...
NATO's new alliance-wide spending target of 5 per cent of GDP sends a strong political message, but at what cost?
Russian reactions to the US-announcements in Munich 2025 were jubilant; Article 5 NATO-Treaty could henceforth be considered meaningless. There ...
NATO's founding member countries were: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the ...
The impact on economic activity and EU government debt of a linear increase in defence spending by up to 1.5% of GDP, starting this year and until 2028.
The 2022 NATO Annual Tracking Survey indicated that 74 per cent of Allied citizens supported maintaining or increasing defence spending.
In the lead-up to the upcoming NATO Summit, this on-the-record briefing with Philippe Dickinson explores the burden sharing agreements that ...
What should NATO do about its eastern border? Would a permanent stationing of troops on the border with Russia reassure states in Eastern Europe or will this ...
First, the burden-sharing indicator, defined as the ratio between the European and US shares of total NATO defense expenditure, does not relate ...
NATO seemed like it might fracture during the painful debate over ... The continent can't quickly replace NATO's American-led command structures.
At the 2025 Hague Summit, allies agreed to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035, with up to 1.5 percent annually dedicated to ...
Article 5 requires unanimous consensus among NATO Allies to be invoked and specifically commits each member state to respond to an armed attack.
Article 5, NATO's mutual defense guarantee, was invoked only once, after 9/11, but it kept the peace in Europe during the Cold War. Trump had deliberately ...
The NATO Defence Planning Process (NDPP) is the primary means to identify and prioritise the capabilities required for full-spectrum operations ...
John Deni analyzes ABCT rotations' financial costs, finding that it costs U.S. taxpayers $70–$135 million more each year to rotate one ABCT to Europe as opposed ...
... burden-sharing. Unity of effort by all parties involved maximises logistics effects and ensures the uninterrupted continuity of logistics ...
They do this by maintaining a credible deterrence and defence posture based on an appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defence ...
NATO and the Claim the U.S. Bears 70% of the Burden: A False and Dysfunctional Approach to Burdensharing ... What may do more lasting damage is ...
The transatlantic defense industrial base has long been fragmented and inflexible. The NATO summit presents an opportunity to address key ...
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