Some NATO countries pay too little says Trump, is that true?
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Recently, Trump caused great concern when he said that some NATO countries that pay too little for defense cannot count on help from the US. The question is actually how much the US itself contributes. To calculate this, I have looked at what some NATO countries spend on defense in terms of Gross National Product (GNP).
The US spends the most on defense
If we look solely at the actual figures of what each NATO country spends on defense, Trump has a point. All other countries in the alliance spend less. Some NATOs are included in the table below. The figures are from The World Bank. I compared the figures for every 5 years from 1980 to 2020. The figures are in % of GDP.
| 1980 | 1985 | 1990 | 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | |
| Finland | 1,7 | 1,7 | 1,6 | 1,4 | 1,2 | 1,5 | 1,5 | 1,4 | 1,4 |
| France | 3,2 | 3,1 | 2,8 | 2,5 | 2,1 | 2,0 | 2,0 | 1,9 | 2,0 |
| Germany | 3,0 | 2,9 | 2,5 | 1,5 | 1,4 | 1,1 | 1,3 | 1,1 | 1,4 |
| Greece | 4,7 | 4,7 | 3,8 | 3,2 | 3,5 | 2,8 | 2,8 | 2,5 | 3,1 |
| Italy | 1,8 | 1,9 | 1,9 | 1,5 | 1,7 | 1,6 | 1,5 | 1,2 | 1,7 |
| Netherlands | 2,8 | 2,8 | 2,4 | 1,8 | 1,4 | 1,4 | 1,3 | 1,1 | 1,4 |
| Norway | 2,6 | 2,8 | 2,9 | 2,3 | 1,7 | 1,6 | 1,5 | 1,5 | 2,0 |
| Poland | 2,7 | 3,0 | 2,6 | 2,0 | 1,8 | 1,9 | 1,8 | 2,1 | 2,2 |
| Romania | 2,2 | 4,3 | 4,5 | 2,6 | 2,5 | 2,0 | 1,2 | 1,5 | 2,0 |
| Spain | 2,5 | 3,0 | 2,3 | 1,9 | 1,7 | 1,4 | 1,4 | 1,3 | 1,4 |
| Sweden | 2,9 | 2,7 | 2,6 | 2,2 | 1,8 | 1,4 | 1,2 | 1,1 | 1,1 |
| Turkey | 3,9 | 3,5 | 3,5 | 3,9 | 3,7 | 2,4 | 2,3 | 1,8 | 2,4 |
| Great Britain | 5,0 | 5,3 | 4,0 | 2,9 | 2,4 | 2,4 | 2,6 | 2,0 | 2,2 |
| USA | 5,2 | 6,5 | 5,6 | 3,9 | 3,1 | 4,1 | 4,9 | 3,5 | 3,7 |
Some of the countries joined NATO after 1980.
US figures not comparable with others
The overview clearly shows that the US spends significantly more money on defense than other NATO countries. But this does not give an accurate picture. While the defense of the United States is engaged across much of the world, other NATO countries are not. The US share of what is actually spent on its own security and in NATO related security is not clear, but probably far lower than most NATO countries. For example, most NATO countries are not engaged in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. This is outside the alliance zone.
When calculating costs, the sale of weapons and weapons systems should also be included in the calculation. I haven’t looked at these figures, but it’s obvious that the US sells far more weapons to NATO countries than it buys. How much a country spends as a percentage of GDP is one figure, how much the arms industry contributes to GDP is another figure that would be interesting to look at.
My conclusion is that the US probably doesn’t contribute as much to NATO as everyone thinks. But defense budgets will increase quite substantially. The reason is the aggression we see from Russia.