Germany will hit the NATO spending goal of two percent of GDP for the first time in over three decades, according to a Defense Ministry spokesman commenting on NATO spending on Wednesday. The 2024 forecast of 2.01% of GDP is a 28% increase over 2023 outlays.

In 2024, 18 of 31 NATO (32 if we think Orban will ever be allowed by Moscow to permit a vote on Sweden's membership by Hungary's parliament) reached the spending target agreed upon in 2024. This is up from 11 member states reaching the target in 2023. According to preliminary forecasts, the number may grow by one as France is on target to hit the two percent goal in 2024.

FACTSHEET NATO Defence Spending by streiff on Scribd

These increases have been in the works for a couple of years and have nothing to do with Donald Trump's threats to abandon allies to Putin's Russia if they don't meet spending targets. As I noted in my post on the subject, NATO expenditures, in dollars and as a percent of GDP, have been increasing since 2015, and the rate of increase doesn't support Trump's claim that he was responsible for the increase. The bump in 2020 is due to the UK and France increasing their budgets, but only 10 hit the two percent target.

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The increases are driven by Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the realization in most of NATO that a Putin success there will inevitably lead to him using the same pseudo-historical justification to attempt to reclaim other areas of the Russian Empire. It is also driven by the knowledge that America's defense expenditures are simply not sufficient to permit America to defend its interests and that the US can't help NATO if it faces a major threat in the Western Pacific.