As Poland Calls to Increase NATO Spending Target to 3 Percent, Biden’s Budget Projects Decline

Polish president Andrzej Duda has an op-ed in the Washington Post today calling for NATO countries to increase their defense-spending target to 3 percent of GDP. Today, that target is 2 percent. Poland already exceeds both targets, spending nearly 4 percent, the highest of any country in the alliance.

Other members have historically lagged well below 2 percent, and many still do. This year, average defense spending for European NATO members finally reached 2 percent of GDP, and it has been increasing relatively quickly since 2022. But the guideline is supposed to be that each country spends 2 percent of its GDP, and over half of alliance members are still below that threshold.

The U.S. is second after Poland, at 3.5 percent of GDP. The only other NATO member above 3 percent currently is Greece. Nevertheless, Duda views the threat from Russia to be growing, and he wants to persuade all NATO members to adopt a 3 percent target. He writes, “I am glad that, having already well-surpassed that minimum, the United States and Poland can lead by example and provide an inspiration for others.”

The problem is that under Joe Biden’s budget, released today, U.S. defense spending would fall below 3 percent of GDP after fiscal year 2026 and never break 3 percent again. By 2034, it would fall to 2.4 percent.

It’s not because Biden is reducing government spending overall. On the contrary, he wants to increase spending and run large budget deficits every year for the next ten years. Rather, it’s that a larger and larger share of that spending will go toward entitlement programs and interest on the debt, and a smaller share will go toward defense and basically everything else the federal government does.

Since the U.S. has a much larger economy than any other NATO member, it could spend less than 3 percent of its GDP on defense and still do the bulk of the alliance’s military spending. But if Duda is looking for the U.S. to lead by example on a 3 percent target, he’ll be sadly disappointed by Biden’s budget.