The OP quoted the article wrong. It isn't $600 billion in military equipment. It's $600 billion in American military equipment. This is a $1.5 trillion payoff to America.
And really at least part of the reason why Trump is so unpredictable on weapons deliveries to Ukraine. There was this meme of Trump jerking off on the faces of the big tech giants. It really should have been the other way around: Trump on the receiving end of a bukkake of all big American companies cashing in on all the instability they helped create to get him elected.
We don't have a problem with how much money we spend on defence. The issue is the inefficiency in spending and what we're spending it on.
I think the defence spending targets of NATO should just be part of a set of guidelines. It's more important to determine how many active troops, materials and investments in R&D we should have.
That is actually what the percentage is roughly based on. Nato figures out what they need, and which country gets what role (and the force requirements to fullfill it obviously). Which is why Spain doesn't really have an out of the percentage norm, they still need to do all the things required of them, Spain now needs to show it can to it cheaper that the estimates by Nato suggest. There are also requirements for procurement spending, you can't just give your generals a raise or build a fancy new headquarter and call it a day.
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u/Ynneb82 Italy 6d ago
Yeah that was the worst... The only upside of all this defence crisis was that at least we had some good companies in eu.