NATO countries' economies and defense spending

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which set out in 1949 with 12 founding members against the Soviet threat, is today experiencing a period of its highest budget and widest borders with 32 members.

So, on the eve of this week's critical leaders' summit in Ankara, what is the state of the Alliance's economic strength, internal dynamics, and defense spending?

A Defense Partnership from the Baltic to the Mediterranean

Founded in 1949 with the US, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, and Iceland, NATO has now reached 32 member countries.

The countries that joined NATO later and their accession years are as follows:

Türkiye (1952), Greece (1952), Germany (1955), Spain (1982), Czechia, Hungary, and Poland (1999), Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia (2004), Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), North Macedonia (2020), Finland (2023), and Sweden (2024).

Shared Values and Differences

Although their geographic and political priorities differ, the greatest common feature that holds NATO countries together is collective defense.

While for countries like Poland and the Baltic states, the primary threat is directly Russia, for countries in the Mediterranean region—such as Türkiye, Italy, and Greece—migration waves, terrorism, and regional instabilities come to the forefront.

On the other hand, the fact that Iceland, which does not even have an army, shares the same table with the US, the world's largest military power, is another important feature of this alliance.

NATO Countries' GDP and Defense Spending

NATO represents a major economic and military power, accounting for approximately half of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Because the US, due to its high GDP and its high rate of contribution, alone accounts for approximately 60 percent of NATO's total defense spending.

For this reason, countries' contributions to defense spending from their GDPs have long caused burden-sharing crises.

Although NATO members have approached the target of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense, the commitment to increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 has become a prominent new target.

This is a concrete indicator that the world is evolving toward a multipolar, riskier security architecture, and that defense spending has become a mandatory expenditure for the security of economies in the new era.