RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany -- NATO defense ministers meeting in Germany on January 9 expressed skepticism about U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's suggestion that members of the alliance should increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP.
During a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the ministers said that the ability of NATO members to fulfill defense tasks is more important than spending relative to GDP.
"All the numbers and percentages don't help us at all at the moment. Two percent of a strong GDP can be a lot, and three and a half percent of a weak GDP can be very little," said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, 5 percent of GDP would be around 40 percent of the federal budget.
"I don't know which country could afford that. So it's not a question of percentages. It is about the question that the capability goals of NATO should be fulfilled," Pistorius said.
Trump put forth the 5 percent spending proposal during a press conference on January 7, raising his long-standing claim that European allies are underpaying for U.S. protection.
"They can all afford it, but they should be at 5 percent not 2 percent," said Trump, who will be inaugurated on January 20.
"Europe is in for a tiny fraction of the money that we're in," Trump said. "We have a thing called the ocean in between us, right? Why are we in for billions and billions of dollars more money than Europe?"
The United States spends 3.38 percent of GDP on defense. Given the size of the U.S. economy, that accounts for more than 60 percent of NATO's total.
Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur told RFE/RL that the United States should demonstrate its readiness to raise its defense spending to 5 percent. He said this would increase it to $1.5 trillion.
But Latvia, which is already one of the few NATO countries spending more than 3 percent of GDP on defense, plans to increase spending further.
"This year, the contribution is 3.4 percent of our GDP. Next year it will be 3.7 percent. And recently political leadership announced that we are willing to move forward with 4 percent," Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds told RFE/RL.
The level of spending demonstrates an understanding of the threats facing the world, he said.
"During the Cold War years…it was around 4 percent on average. So that's why certainly 2 percent [as] we discussed previously [is] not enough," Spruds said.
Adopting a new defense spending target would require agreement from all 32 NATO member states. As of July, 23 countries in the alliance had reached the 2 percent of GDP defense spending target.
It was the first time that several large European economies -- namely Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey -- achieved the target.