The Great NATO Defence Spending Illusion (Part 2/2)

Towards a balanced solution

NATO’s 2% GDP target is a relic, a political artefact masquerading as a measure of seriousness. It is a metric that rewards recession, penalises prosperity, and flatters those who play the accounting game best. In The Great NATO Defence Spending Illusion Part 1, I laid bare the statistical conjuring that lets Washington inflate its numbers with global aid and pork-barrel spending, while frontline Europeans are punished for investing in bunkers and resilience. The unfairness of the current MAGA reproach that other NATO members need to do more is patently a steaming mound of bovine effusion built on ignorance.

The extant GDP% scoreboard is rigged, the rules are arbitrary, and the alliance’s sense of solidarity is, at best, a polite fiction.

But what if we could count what actually counts? What if we could build a metric that reflects real effort, real risk, and real value for collective security? What if the NATO defence spending metric took defence capability into account, not the size of the economy?