NATO's 32 allies signed a summit communique in The Hague on June 25, 2025 committing to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense by 2035 — up from the 2 percent benchmark set at Wales in 2014. The number is real, dated, and in the document. The overlooked detail is the split: only 3.5 points must go to core defense, and 1.5 points may count toward defense-related infrastructure — roads, ports, cyber, resilience — a categorization that lets high-debt allies book civilian spending toward the pledge. The machinery of that split is where the pledge will be judged.
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What did the communique actually commit allies to?
Per the Hague summit declaration, allies pledged to move to 5 percent of GDP annually by 2035, split into 3.5 percent core defense requirements and 1.5 percent for defense- and security-related investment, with a review checkpoint in 2029. The trajectory is not flat: national plans due under the pledge are expected to front-load the core 3.5 percent by 2032. Spain publicly sought flexibility on the target, and the summit's final language on national circumstances — noted in reporting by Reuters and AP from the summit — is the trace of that negotiation.
How does this change the 2 percent era?
The Wales 2014 benchmark of 2 percent was met by only a handful of allies for most of a decade; NATO's own pre-summit 2025 estimates put around two-thirds of members at or above 2 percent that year, largely driven by Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The 5 percent pledge formalizes a different problem: not whether allies will spend more, but what counts. The 1.5-point infrastructure category has no precedent in NATO's defense-planning rubric, and its definitions — set out in the communique's implementing language — will be written by national governments first and audited later. The comparison:
| Benchmark | Level | Deadline | What counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wales pledge (2014) | 2% of GDP | aimed for 2024 | Core defense per NATO's 2% definition |
| Hague pledge (2025) | 5% of GDP | 2035 (review 2029) | 3.5% core + 1.5% defense-related infrastructure |
What is the US position on record?
The US pressed publicly for the 5 percent figure through spring 2025, with the president and the defense secretary both tying US force posture in Europe to allied spending levels in on-record statements. The communique's language meets that demand on paper. What the document does not establish is any binding consequence for missing it — the pledge, like Wales before it, rests on peer pressure, national plans, and NATO's annual review of them. The strongest counterargument to the skeptics' "numbers on paper" reading is the Wales precedent: the 2 percent target was dismissed the same way in 2014, and European defense spending roughly doubled in the decade after, per NATO published figures. The answer to that counterargument is that the doubling followed an invasion, not a communique.
What does this change?
The documents point to three consequences. National budgets through 2032 now carry a visible NATO benchmark that opposition parties can cost and attack — Spain's budget arithmetic, reported by Reuters in June 2025, is the first test case. The infrastructure category will pull transport and energy ministries into defense planning for the first time, since their budgets can now earn pledge credit. And the 2029 review, written into the communique, is the date the split's definitions get their first audit — the moment this pledge either acquires teeth or becomes the Wales target with a bigger denominator.