https://www.statista.com/statistics/5840...countries/ shows the NATO countries military spending as a percentage of GDP. There are some countries that do not reach 2% of GDP for military spending that really have no excuse. Germany at 1.57% is the poster child for this situation. At the end of the cold war, Germany spent lots of money getting the Russians out of Europe (especially East Germany). Russia didn't have the cash to bring it's troops home and house them. Germany paid the bill. Germany also paid a very large part of the costs to allow Poland to switch to a market economy in a single year. On top of that, Germany had the significant expense of absorbing and integrating East Germany into the nation. To some extent, this goes on still.
The US and other NATO nations therefore didn't object when Germany's military expenditures dropped significantly. Germany had it's own issues and had been generous in helping Eastern Europe. Additionally, the US and other NATO allies knew Russia was very nervous about German military power. The US in particular wanted to reassure Russia that Germany would never come after them again. Low military spending in Germany helped make that case.
That was all well and good, but by 2000 or so the situation had changed. Germany needed to ramp up it's defense spending to correspond to it's place in the world economy. Unfortunately the German politicians had got very used to spending that money on other things. They didn't want to give up their extra "peace dividend", and they didn't. Unfortunately, much of the rest of NATO interpreted that as carte blanche to do the same.
Germany, France, Netherlands, Norway, Canada and probably Belgium can undoubtedly afford to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. They just haven't done so. This unfortunately has caused the defense industry in these countries to reduce capacity and in many cases to go out of business. Many of these firms were forced to team up with US and UK firms to maintain even minimal capacity. Doing business with the US and in Asia has been essential to preserving their existence. Even if all these countries decided to dump a bunch of money into defense tomorrow, many of the indigenous defense contractors couldn't do much with it in the short term. It is also politically impossible in most cases to spend that kind of defense money outside the country, where capacity may exist. For that reason, what the EU can do for Ukraine in the near term is quite limited.
It might seem that the PIGS have such weak economies that they actually can't afford the 2% level of defense spending. This is essentially true, except Greece somehow manages to spend a whopping 3.01% on defense. Of course, that is mostly to counter Türkiye, one of their NATO allies. There are also quite a few "small" NATO countries that actually do meet the 2% spending goal. There are many more that do not. While not good, in general these nations GDP is so small that 2% of it isn't enough to greatly alter the business case for defense contractors in the EU, even if these nations were willing to buy outside their own country. These nations have in many cases taken advantage of the opportunity to "help" Ukraine by sending obsolete equipment to Ukraine in return for new equipment (in the future) from more prosperous NATO allies. Probably the best they could do anyway.
The US and other NATO nations therefore didn't object when Germany's military expenditures dropped significantly. Germany had it's own issues and had been generous in helping Eastern Europe. Additionally, the US and other NATO allies knew Russia was very nervous about German military power. The US in particular wanted to reassure Russia that Germany would never come after them again. Low military spending in Germany helped make that case.
That was all well and good, but by 2000 or so the situation had changed. Germany needed to ramp up it's defense spending to correspond to it's place in the world economy. Unfortunately the German politicians had got very used to spending that money on other things. They didn't want to give up their extra "peace dividend", and they didn't. Unfortunately, much of the rest of NATO interpreted that as carte blanche to do the same.
Germany, France, Netherlands, Norway, Canada and probably Belgium can undoubtedly afford to spend 2% of their GDP on defense. They just haven't done so. This unfortunately has caused the defense industry in these countries to reduce capacity and in many cases to go out of business. Many of these firms were forced to team up with US and UK firms to maintain even minimal capacity. Doing business with the US and in Asia has been essential to preserving their existence. Even if all these countries decided to dump a bunch of money into defense tomorrow, many of the indigenous defense contractors couldn't do much with it in the short term. It is also politically impossible in most cases to spend that kind of defense money outside the country, where capacity may exist. For that reason, what the EU can do for Ukraine in the near term is quite limited.
It might seem that the PIGS have such weak economies that they actually can't afford the 2% level of defense spending. This is essentially true, except Greece somehow manages to spend a whopping 3.01% on defense. Of course, that is mostly to counter Türkiye, one of their NATO allies. There are also quite a few "small" NATO countries that actually do meet the 2% spending goal. There are many more that do not. While not good, in general these nations GDP is so small that 2% of it isn't enough to greatly alter the business case for defense contractors in the EU, even if these nations were willing to buy outside their own country. These nations have in many cases taken advantage of the opportunity to "help" Ukraine by sending obsolete equipment to Ukraine in return for new equipment (in the future) from more prosperous NATO allies. Probably the best they could do anyway.