NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday urged the 30 member countries to commit to spending at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense by a set date, as Russia’s war on Ukraine and other threats eat into military spending.
NATO allies agreed in 2014, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, to halt the spending cuts they had made after the Cold War and move toward spending 2% of GDP on their defense budgets by 2024. That pledge expires next year, and NATO is working on a new target.
