With June’s NATO Summit likely to call for substantial increases in member defense spending, increased scrutiny awaits those NATO members that still haven’t reached even the 2% spending minimum—a minimum that’s been required for well over a decade.
One of the more notorious NATO free riders is Belgium, which has skated by while spending only 1.3% of gross domestic product—the measure of economic growth that reflects the total value of goods and services produced in a country—on defense. That already astonishingly low number includes the 0.16% of GDP allocated to Ukraine for aid—meaning Belgium’s actual spending on armed forces equals less than 1.2% of GDP.
Belgium ranks last out of all NATO treaty members for equipment expenditure and fourth from last in total defense spending.
Yet Belgium is a relatively populous and wealthy country, home to 12…
