In 2023, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which consists of 1.3 member countries, allocated a defense budget of $1 trillion. The United States has the largest contribution, providing about 68% of the total budget, which amounts to $860 billion for 2024. This significant sum brings the US close to the $1 trillion defense spending threshold, a figure that may be reached in future budgets. In contrast, the other 31 NATO member states have contributed a total of $440 billion.
Germany is the second-largest contributor, with defense expenditures of $68 billion for this year. Despite this significant amount, US spending on NATO is over ten times larger than that of Germany. This discrepancy highlights the dominant financial role of the US within the alliance.
As early as 2018, former US President Donald Trump called on NATO member states to increase their defense spending to 2% of their GDP. While the US continued to contribute an additional 6% to the alliance’s budget, other member countries were only able to increase their contributions to less than 1%.
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The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has prompted European countries to increase their defense expenditures. Since 2022, there has been a noticeable increase in budgets among European NATO members as they strive to strengthen their security measures.
Here is a breakdown of the top 10 contributors to NATO for 2024:
United States: $860 billion
Germany: $68.08 billion
United Kingdom: $65.7 billion
France: $56.6 billion
Italy: $31.5 billion
Poland: $29.1 billion
Canada: $28.9 billion
Spain: $19.1 billion
Netherlands: $16.7 billion
Turkey: $15.8 billion
The other 22 countries have collectively raised an additional $150 billion, bringing the total budget to $1.3 trillion.
