Boris Pistorius, Germany's defence minister, was recently asked whether Nato was ready for Trump. Elections will have a result whatever, he began, before acknowledging that much of Europe had been slow to increase defence budgets, missing the warning of Russia's capture of Crimea in Ukraine in 2014 and only reacting substantively in 2022 after Russia's aggression.
The truth is that the US is Nato and Nato is the US; the dependence on America is essentially as big as ever, said Jamie Shea, a former Nato official who teaches at the University of Exeter.
US defence spending will hit a record $968bn in 2024, while the budgets of the 30 European allies plus Canada amount to $506bn, accounting for only 34% of the overall total.
Despite 23 out of 32 members expecting to spend more than 2% of GDP on defence this year, non-US defence spending in Nato was only 24% in 2014.
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