UK’s new defense minister says all NATO members need to spend more than 2% on defense

NATO members will need to raise their defense spending beyond the alliance’s 2% target, the UK’s new Defense Minister John Healey said.

Given the current geopolitical situation, “all NATO nations are going to need to do more than simply 2%,” Healey told reporters on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on Wednesday. “We are pushing towards 2.5%.”

Healey, who took on the defense post less than a week ago, stressed that European members will need to take on a bigger share of the burden for the alliance’s defense going forwards. “For America, whatever the results of the presidential election, the priority is increasingly going to shift to the Indo-Pacific, so that the European nations in NATO must do more of the heavy lifting.”

Healey’s comments come as NATO has hailed the fact that 23 out of the bloc’s 32 member states are on track to hit the 2% spending target. Even so, officials are increasingly saying that members will have to boost their spending even further. “Privately, everybody would agree that everybody’s going to have to go above 2%,” one senior NATO official said at a briefing Tuesday.