{"id":96245,"date":"2025-06-26T03:00:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=96245"},"modified":"2025-06-25T11:38:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T15:38:52","slug":"nato-members-commit-to-a-new-5-defence-spending-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/06\/26\/nato-members-commit-to-a-new-5-defence-spending-target\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO members “commit” to a new 5% defence spending target"},"content":{"rendered":"

As many predicted, just as Canada finally gets around to at least pretending to meet the 2% defence spending target we agreed to over a decade ago, those goalposts get moved<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So today the leaders of Nato convene for a landmark summit<\/a>:<\/p>\n

NATO countries agree to increase defence spending to 5%<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

That headline isn’t strictly accurate. Member states have apparently agreed to commit to a target of 5% by 2035, to mark the start of the fourteenth anniversary of the Ukraine war. Which means that, as always with Nato, they’ll all look butch at the photo-op, and then they’ll do bugger all. Even the “commitment” to a “target” is too much for Spain, which has secured an opt-out.<\/p>\n

But hang on a minute: Nato has been at war — or at proxy-war — with Russia for three-and-a-half years now. So it’s been on a war-footing, supposedly, for seven-eighths of the length of the First World War. How’s that war-footing going? Per Nato’s head honcho, Mark Rutte (the woeful former Dutch PM — ask our pal Eva Vlaardingerbroek), earlier this month<\/a>:<\/p>\n