Brussels [Belgium], March 22: NATO's 30 members spent an estimated $1.2 trillion on defence in 2022, a 2.2% increase in real terms compared to the previous year - but the United States is still picking up the bulk of the tab, according to an alliance report released on Tuesday. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg made the figures public with the release of NATO's annual report, which showed that the US is footing 70 percent of NATO's defence spending. "In a more dangerous world, allies increasingly see 2% of gross domestic product (GDP) spent on defence as a floor and not a ceiling," Stoltenberg said in his foreword to the NATO annual report. Figures from NATO's report showed that the 30% share not paid for by the US came from Canada and the remaining 28 European members.This comes despite US pressure to boost spending and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
However, NATO's annual report praised European allies and Canada for increasing "defence spending for the eighth consecutive year." Seven of the alliance members met NATO's self-imposed 2% pledge for defence spending as a proportion of GDP in 2022, down from 8 in 2021 and 11 in 2020. This is up, however, from just three countries in 2014, the year NATO members committed to reaching this spending pledge faster after Russia annexed Crimea in Ukraine.Greece spent the largest proportion of its economic output at 3.54 per cent in 2022, ahead of the US at 3.46%. Lithuania, Poland, Britain, Estonia and Latvia followed this. Germany lags at 1.49% despite German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announcing in February 2022 plans to invest 2% of GDP in defence every year in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a point of reference, the US alone accounts for 54% of the alliance's GDP.
Source: Qatar Tribune