There is more to NATO burden sharing than the 2% spending dogma
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As the NATO alliance prepares to gather this summer to celebrate its 75th birthday, rhetoric around "burden sharing" – specifically whether member countries are paying enough, where "enough" is typically defined as military spending equal to 2% of GDP – is likely to heat up. With a war raging just off NATO's eastern flank as Ukraine defends itself against an aggressor that has become NATO's raison d'etre, it's a fair question: Are NATO member countries doing enough?
Although many NATO member countries' militaries need work, obsession with the 2% of GDP metric belies a fundamental misunderstanding of military capabilities and national preparedness for conflict. Spending is important, but there is much more that matters.
Rather than serving as a long-standing foundation of the NATO alliance, after years of serving as an unofficial benchmark, the metric that 2% of each member country's GDP should be dedicated to military spending was only officially agreed upon by NATO members at a summit in 2014 – and it was a target that was to be met "within a decade," or by 2024. At the time of the summit, in the wake of Russia's occupation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, NATO leaders were worried about their militaries' readiness, and several NATO countries reported having low – even negative for Croatia and Italy – defense expenditures as a percent of GDP.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/there-is-more-to-nato-burden-sharing-than-the-2-spending-dogma/ar-BB1lkkTl
