Trump's '5 percent down' plan for Europe

Five and dime stores are now a thing of the past in the U.S. But if the reporting in the Financial Times is accurate, President-elect Donald Trump is signaling to NATO member-states that they must spend 5 percent of their GDP annually on defense if they want U.S. support.

That is a big ask. As of June 2024, of the 32 NATO countries, eight were still far short of the 2 percent of GDP threshold. Only Poland exceeds 4 percent.

That may be sufficient in peacetime, but Russia and its Axis of Evil allies are knocking on the door. What's more, the European continent is already engaged in an active hybrid war with Russia involving espionage, sabotage, cyber-attacks, assassinations and disinformation.

Nor is it adequate for what is likely to come in the next decade. The Kremlin is rapidly preparing an even larger kinetic war against Europe.

Andrei Belousov, the Russian defense chief, underscored the urgency of the latter point when he announced earlier this month that Russia must be ready for a direct “military conflict with NATO in the next ten years.”

To get there and to win the war in Ukraine, Moscow announced in September that it was raising defense spending by 25 percent in 2025, to 6.3 percent of its GDP. That is 1.5 times current U.S. defense spending as a share of GDP, and three times NATO’s present median.

Russia is on a war footing, but many NATO countries remain in denial of what lies ahead — or, as in the case of Slovakia and Hungary, they are prioritizing economic security over long-term national security.

Canada, a key NORAD partner, currently only spends 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. Belgium, home to NATO’s headquarters, is even worse, spending only 1.1 percent.

Consequently, Europe is vulnerable. That goes double if Russia, in its eventual war with NATO, weaponizes European civilians by intentionally attacking hospitals, energy grids, schools and historic cultural sites, as he has all across across Ukraine.

Leaked NATO reports from last May are alarming. Brussels is estimating that NATO member-states are currently only “able to provide less than 5 percent of air defense capacities deemed necessary to protect its members in central and eastern Europe against a full-scale attack.” 

The area where the Russian military has been most successful is in targeting Ukrainian population centers and energy infrastructure with missiles and drones. The exposure to a future Europe at war is very real.

That means 95 percent of Europe presently is a target rich environment.

NATO therefore cannot think just in terms of GDP. Collectively, the organization must also be prioritizing capabilities — not just in terms of present needs, but also in terms of what is being learned on the battlefields of Ukraine.

Israel’s wars against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran must be informative as well. Especially in regard to electronic warfare given the proliferation of kinetic drones being used to interdict troops, armor and artillery — as well as constructing a layered and integrated air defense system along the lines of the Iron Dome.

Air defense is only the beginning. 

Artillery and mortar shell production is woefully inadequate. Come 2025, Ukraine estimates that Russia alone will “be able to produce 30 percent more artillery shells than all [European Union] member-states combined.”

Ukraine’s lack of precision deep-strike weapons for most of the war, including the American ATACMS, British Storm Shadow, French SCALP and German Taurus missiles, has prevented Kyiv from closing out the war and has largely reduced the Ukrainians to defending against Russia’s World War I-like frontal assaults.

NATO cannot win a future war if it cannot successfully interdict Russian supply lines and fight the deep fight, so as to create space to win in the close fight. Ukraine, repeatedly, has bloodily run into this reality across the 700 miles of the war’s front lines.

The cost alone in human life has been staggering as a result of Russian attrition warfare. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg — Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia come Jan. 20 — estimates that between 350,000 and 400,000 Russian troops have died alongside 150,000 Ukrainian soldiers. 

Multiply those numbers by traditional three or four-to-one wound-to-kill ratios, and it quickly becomes clear NATO cannot afford in the future the human cost of fighting the Kremlin’s style of mass attrition warfare.

In contrast, Trump’s demand for 5 percent down in the here and now is exponentially cheaper. And in reality, from a national security standpoint, it is also far more prudent and strategic for NATO’s European member-states.

Training is key as well. NATO’s ground defense is predicated upon rapid response — and that means being able to mobilize and reinforce forward-deployed NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. 

That entails training soldiers from the ground up. First at the national level, then as part of a NATO Joint/Combined team forged by joint exercises and training. 

Spending 5 percent now on their development and training is what will save many of their lives in the future if war with Russia erupts in the next decade. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not making this same investment in his army — and it is partly why his casualty rates in Ukraine are so high.

You cannot put a uniform on just anyone, provide a weapon, and expect him or her to be a soldier in two weeks. Yet, that is exactly what Putin is doing. NATO, in contrast, spends years developing and training its fighting men and women.

NATO must also be prepared to fight future kinetic wars in new and innovative ways. Artificial intelligence is already transforming the battlefields in Ukraine — and the intelligence gathering and assessment process.

Ukraine's military has collected over 2 million hours of video from the battlefield and is using it “to identify targets [by] scanning images far quicker than a human." Overlays of the images detect changes and flag humans for action.

None of this will be easy. Europe long invested in its comprehensive social programs is facing a stark set of choices: national security or the ideal social state. Finding the political will to change that will not be easy.

But Trump is laying the gauntlet. Pay now by putting 5 percent down, or risk losing future U.S. support of NATO.

Europe failed that same kind of choice in the 1930s, and World War II ensued. Today, Putin has made his position clear. Last Friday, he bluntly announced that that the world has declared war on Russia, and that in response, “Russian world has declared war.”

The only remaining question now is Europe willing to listen to Trump and make the 5 percent GDP investment, or to Putin, who is betting they will not.

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer.