The Check Has Arrived
At the 2025 NATO Summit in The Hague, member states agreed to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2035. That breaks down to 3.5% for core military expenditure and up to 1.5% for cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, and defense innovation. It is, by any measure, the most ambitious military spending commitment in NATO's 77-year history.
And the public has no idea what it actually costs.
From 2% to 5% Is Not a Rounding Error
For years, the fight was getting allies to hit 2%. In 2014, only three NATO members met the target. By 2025, all allies except Iceland are expected to clear 2% for the first time. That alone represents a decade-long political struggle.
Now multiply it by 2.5.
Germany, Europe's largest economy, currently spends around 2% -- roughly EUR 80 billion annually. To hit 3.5% on core defense alone, Berlin would need to spend EUR 140 billion. That's EUR 60 billion in new annual military spending that has to come from somewhere: schools, pensions, healthcare, infrastructure, or new debt. Germany has already earmarked EUR 377 billion for new military procurement under its 2026 budget, aiming to build what officials call "the strongest conventional army in Europe."
Poland, which already leads NATO allies in proportional spending at over 4% of GDP, has set a record defense budget of $55 billion for 2026.
A Eurofighter Typhoon -- the kind of hardware European defense budgets need to fund at scale.
The Public Says Yes Until You Show Them the Bill
On February 15, 2026, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, the UK's Chief of Defense Staff, and General Carsten Breuer, Germany's Chief of Defense, published a joint op-ed in The Guardian. Their message was blunt: Europe "must now confront uncomfortable truths" about security, and citizens need to accept "hard choices" and "painful spending decisions."
Polling backs the problem. Politico surveys show Western publics broadly support higher defense spending in principle. That support collapses the moment respondents consider what gets cut to fund it. Nobody wants to be invaded. Nobody wants to pay for the army that prevents it.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called it "reckless militarization" and said NATO nations are "essentially robbing their taxpayers." That line hits differently when taxpayers are thinking the same thing.
The Threat Assessment
A survey of 501 European security experts by the EU Institute for Security Studies rated Russian aggression against non-NATO neighbors as high-risk. Hybrid attacks on critical infrastructure -- subsea cable sabotage, power grid disruptions, cyberattacks -- were rated as Europe's highest-probability threat. Multiple NATO countries assess a potential Russian military action within 3 to 10 years.
The EU has launched a EUR 150 billion loan instrument called "SAFE" (Security Action for Europe) and activated an EUR 800 billion rearmament mobilization plan. Britain is building six new munitions factories. Germany is repositioning troops near its eastern border.
Bruegel estimates Europe needs 50 new brigades, 1,400 tanks, 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, and a million artillery shells just to replace the American security guarantee. That's the math. The question is whether voters will accept it before the threat forces them to.