The High Price of Defending Europe Against Russia

European NATO members are racing to bulk up their militaries in the face of Russian aggression and the possibility that Donald Trump, if elected in November, may try to pull the US away. But experts say NATO nations and their allies need to at least double their defense spending to deter any potential Kremlin threat.

In the Baltics, the number of allied troops is rising. It’s there that NATO is planning to station new brigades, with soldiers from Canada in Latvia, UK troops in Estonia and German forces in Lithuania. But all of these efforts, including continuing aid to Ukraine, will require a lot more funding. Alarms are ringing all across the continent about how much more NATO members will need to spend to give Russia pause, especially if Trump takes over in the White House. In 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Donbas region, NATO members promised to spend 2% of GDP on defense. A decade later, only about half of them met that target. Though Vladimir Putin has said he has no intention of challenging NATO, experts are estimating that member states need to double their military spending to 3-4% of GDP, close to Cold War levels of spending, just in case.