During the years 2014-2024, the Albanian Defense authorities have spent approximately 320 million euros on the purchase of military equipment.
Albania ranks among the top NATO countries that have spent the most on military equipment as a percentage of total defense spending, a chart by The Economist weekly has shown. Our country, which is approaching the 50 percent quota in 2024, ranks behind Poland and Hungary, according to the British magazine’s outline. The list of the top ten countries continues with Luxembourg, Finland, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom. During the years 2014-2024, the Albanian Defense authorities have spent approximately 320 million euros on the purchase of military equipment.
Debates over burden-sharing have “moved and shaken” the alliance since its founding in 1949, says Rafael Loss of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.
Recently, Donald Trump, in both his first and current terms, has rightly criticized the Europeans for not paying their fair share, while America keeps everyone safe. Belgium’s defense minister has vowed to end a “period of national shame” in which the country “was not loyal to its status as a founding member of NATO, but acted as the most notorious knight of the entire alliance.” Even Iceland, which has no armed forces, is looking for ways to be “a good ally.” To get a sense of where things stand, look at: money (how much is spent), capabilities (what is spent on), and commitment (deployment to missions). All but ten of NATO’s 32 members meet the current spending target of 2 percent of GDP, compared with 25 defaulters a decade ago.
Italy and Spain, two of the alliance’s lowest-spending countries, have pledged to achieve it this year. But the positives largely end there.
For one thing, the 2 percent target is outdated; at the summit opening on June 24 in The Hague, the alliance is expected to agree on a new target of 3.5 percent of GDP, plus another 1.5 percent for complementary infrastructure. A better gauge of who is putting their weight behind it is to look at what the money is being spent on. NATO requires members to spend at least 20 percent of their military budgets on equipment. Almost all meet that target, according to the chart, although it is likely to rise to a third at the summit. But again, a focus on numbers can obscure whether the equipment serves the purpose of collective defense.
Take Greece. Last year it spent 36 percent of its military budget on equipment, one of the highest rates. However, most of this is focused on opposing Turkey, another NATO ally, not Russia.
The alliance has long sought to influence the equipment members buy through the NATO Defense Planning Process. Under that process, allies agree to buy equipment based on the alliance’s operational needs. But two decades of fighting jihadists have derailed that process. Many members invested in a multitude of systems without much coordination. The threat from Russia has helped to focus minds. “Rather than building forces for a range of possible scenarios in multiple theaters,” write Angus Lapsley and Admiral Pierre Vandier, two NATO officials responsible for the new planning cycle, allies will be asked to “focus primarily” on deterring Russia. What the division of labor will look like is not yet clear.
NATO is expected to adopt new “capability objectives” in June, which will set out the equipment each member will be required to provide. They are likely to prioritize areas where America has traditionally dominated but may now be retreating, such as intelligence gathering, deep strike or strategic lift.
Just over three-quarters of members have agreed to the new plans, including “those who don’t usually accept them,” Vandier noted. NATO is considering greater specialization. The head of its Military Committee, Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, has called for a “multi-speed approach,” in which larger armed forces would take on the burden of projecting power against Russia, while smaller states focus on more mundane but achievable tasks such as logistics or cybersecurity. On the eastern flank, Spain is responsible for a brigade-sized multinational force in Slovakia, and Italy oversees one in Bulgaria. Portuguese fighter jets help patrol the skies over the Baltic. Almost every small member – from Croatia and Albania to Slovenia – contributes troops to NATO’s eastern flank.