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NATO's 5% Pledge: An Obscene Betrayal of Global Needs
Presented as a historic step, in truth this increased level of military spending represents a major step backwards for humanity and the common good.
Jun 26, 2025
At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5% of nations’ GDP by 2035. Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step. But in truth, it represents a major step backwards—away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race that will impoverish societies while enriching weapons contractors.
This outrageous 5% spending target didn’t come out of nowhere—it’s the direct result of years of bullying by U.S. President Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump repeatedly berated NATO members for not spending enough on their militaries, pressuring them to meet a 2% GDP threshold that was already controversial and so excessive that nine NATO countries still fall below that “target.”
Now, with Trump back in the White House, NATO leaders are falling in line, setting a staggering 5% target that even the United States—already spending over $1 trillion a year on its military—doesn’t reach. This is not defense; it’s extortion on a global scale, pushed by a president who views diplomacy as a shakedown and war as good business.
This is not defense; it’s extortion on a global scale, pushed by a president who views diplomacy as a shakedown and war as good business.
Countries across Europe and North America are already slashing public services and yet they are now expected to funnel even more taxpayer money into war preparation. Currently, no NATO country spends more on the military than on health or education. But if they all hit the new 5% military spending goal, 21 of them would spend more on weapons than on schools.
Spain was one of the few to reject this escalation, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez making clear that his government would not sacrifice pensions and social programs to meet a militarized spending target. Other governments, including Belgium and Slovakia, quietly pushed back too.
Still, NATO leaders pressed on, cheered by Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who fawned over Donald Trump’s demand that Europe boost defense spending. Rutte even referred to Trump as “Daddy,” a comment that—while dismissed as a joke—spoke volumes about NATO’s subservience to U.S. militarism. Under Trump’s influence, the NATO alliance is shedding even the pretense of being a defensive pact, embracing instead the language and logic of perpetual war.
Real security doesn’t come from tanks and missiles—it comes from strong communities, global cooperation, and urgent action on our shared crises.
Just before NATO leaders were gathering at the Hague, protesters took to the streets under the banner “No to NATO.” And back in their home countries, civic groups are demanding a redirection of resources toward climate justice, healthcare, and peace. Polls show that majorities in the U.S. oppose increased military spending, but NATO is not accountable to the people. It’s accountable to political elites, arms manufacturers and a Cold War logic that sees every global development through the lens of threat and domination.
NATO’s expansion, both in terms of war spending and size (it has grown from 12 founding members to 32 countries today) has not brought peace. On the contrary, the alliance’s promise that Ukraine would one day join its ranks was one of the triggers for Russia’s brutal war. Instead of de-escalating, the alliance has doubled down with weapons, not diplomacy. In Gaza, Israel continues its U.S.-backed war with impunity, while NATO nations send more arms and offer no serious push for peace. Now the alliance wants to drain public coffers to sustain these wars indefinitely. NATO is also surrounding its adversaries, particularly Russia, with ever more bases and troops.
Under Trump’s influence, the NATO alliance is shedding even the pretense of being a defensive pact, embracing instead the language and logic of perpetual war.
All of this demands a radical rethink. As the world burns—literally—NATO is stocking up on kindling. When healthcare systems are crumbling, schools underfunded, and blazing temperatures making large swaths of the planet uninhabitable, the idea that governments should commit billions more to weapons and war is obscene. Real security doesn’t come from tanks and missiles—it comes from strong communities, global cooperation, and urgent action on our shared crises.
We need to flip the script. That means cutting military budgets, withdrawing from endless wars, and beginning a serious conversation about dismantling NATO. The alliance, born of the Cold War, is now a stumbling block to global peace and an active participant in war-making. Its latest summit only reinforces that reality.
This is not just about NATO’s budget—it’s about our future. Every euro or dollar spent on weapons is one not spent on confronting the climate crisis, lifting people out of poverty, or building a peaceful world. For the future of our planet, we must reject NATO and the war economy.
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How Would Gandhi Have Faced Down Trump?
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating.
Feb 22, 2025
On Inauguration Day, I was flying home from India, where I had attended Gandhi 3.0, a retreat that brought together 40 people from around the world to explore how Gandhian principles can be meaningful in today's world. I returned to the U.S. just as my country was erupting in turmoil.
My emotions were all over the place. Having just experienced the most heart-expanding nine days of my life, where I witnessed the most extraordinary acts of generosity and heard some of the wisest of voices, I felt strangely grounded with a deep sense of love for, well, everyone. But I was also aghast, frightened for so many, and startled by those who were delighted by the sledgehammer upheavals, the head-spinning international proclamations, and the unconstitutional decrees.
I certainly understand the desire to upend “the system”—something I’ve been trying to do with multiple unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems my entire adult life—but what was unfolding was inchoate, cruel, and chaotic destruction rather than carefully considered interventions that would reduce waste and corruption.
What could Gandhi teach me and us?
Like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Studying Gandhi helps me put my country into perspective. Gandhi spent decades endeavoring to free his country from British rule using only nonviolent methods. He worked to end the evil of untouchability embedded in India’s caste system. He led a movement toward Indian self-reliance. And all along the way he made inner work—the cultivation of love and wisdom; inquiry, introspection, and integrity; and meditation—foundational to everything he did.
Gandhi once said:
I hold myself incapable of hating any being on Earth. By a long course of prayerful discipline, I have ceased for over 40 years to hate anybody. I know this is a big claim. Nevertheless, I make it in all humility. But I can and do hate evil wherever it exists. I hate the systems of government that the British people have set up in India. I hate the ruthless exploitation of India even as I hate from the bottom of my heart the hideous system of untouchability for which millions of Hindus have made themselves responsible. But I do not hate the domineering Englishmen as I refuse to hate the domineering Hindus. I seek to reform them in all the loving ways that are open to me. My noncooperation has its roots not in hatred, but in love.
I posted this quote shortly after my return to the U.S., and a friend commented: “Waiting for your solution? Do we just be still without any action to what is happening in this country?”
Gandhi would hardly want us to keep still. After all, he worked tirelessly. He also worked strategically, wisely, and forcefully, with force embedded in his guiding principle of satyagraha, often translated as “nonviolent resistance.” But satyagraha means so much more than this. The word combines satya, meaning truth, and agraha, meaning insistence, firmness, and adherence. In other words, Gandhi’s force for change was an unshakeable commitment to opposing injustice with truth. And truth for Gandhi meant never doing evil to combat evil; never using violence to oppose violence; and never succumbing to hate to resist hate. It meant no less than living, acting, and teaching with an abiding core of love.
Gandhi is famous for responding to a reporter’s question about his message by jotting down, “My life is my message.” Those five words aren’t just one man’s story. They represent a universal truth. Each of our lives is our message. The question thus becomes: Am I modeling the message I most want to convey?
None of us is or will be Gandhi. Nor will we have the megaphone to the world that he came to have through the power of his character, his resolve, and his at the time unique nonviolent approach to resistance. If you or I declared, as Gandhi did on several occasions, that we were fasting until and unless violence among our citizenry ended, we would surely die of starvation, and that violence would persist after we were gone. But that doesn’t mean that Gandhian principles have nothing to teach us today. They absolutely do.
Here are Gandhian teachings I am taking to heart right now:
- Avoid rash acts and angry outbursts; these will not bring about any positive change.
- Learn from the changemakers who have brought about greater peace and justice and built more compassionate, sustainable systems against all odds.
- Embrace satyagraha, recognizing that this requires cultivating the inner resolve to continually pursue justice through nonviolent, loving means.
- Work toward systemic change, understanding that this takes profound dedication, deep thinking, careful strategizing, and patience.
- Do the inner work as tirelessly as the outer work to achieve all of the above.
If you were hoping for more specific strategies to address your current concerns, this may be a disappointing list, but let’s not forget that most people across the political spectrum care about others and want a future where their fellow citizens can thrive. Rather than consider those with different political views one’s enemies, we can perceive them as fellow participants and even potential friends with whom we can communicate, and maybe collaborate, as we identify better ways forward upon which we can agree.
Gandhi devoted years to readying himself and his followers for nonviolent resistance. He spent nearly two decades in preparation for the Salt March that led to India’s independence. Just ponder that as you consider the role you will play in achieving your vision for a sustainable, peaceful, just world.
Please don’t interpret this as meaning that we should only cultivate inner strength and love, or that we should do nothing now other than plan and strategize for an indefinite future. Rather, like Gandhi, ask yourself how you can tend your time carefully knowing that ineffective—and potentially destructive—efforts will waste your precious energy and could also backfire.
Whatever injustices, cruelties, and evils you seek to end, Gandhi’s life and message are worth studying and emulating. He demonstrated that satyagraha is not only a profound strategy; it is fueled by the most powerful of human capacities: love. Given that Gandhi was perhaps the greatest changemaker in history, it’s worth deeply considering his approach as a model for today’s world. And lest we think we somehow need to dispense with our anger to follow in Gandhi’s footsteps, he also said this:
“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
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When It's Not Foolishly Romantic to Celebrate Hope
In the year ahead we are going to have to harness the power of organized movements that can bring people together and make what seems impossible, possible.
Dec 25, 2023
After a year of economic hardship, climate disasters, and war, few could be blamed for feeling like our leaders have let us down. As we look ahead to a new year, I find it helpful to remember examples of those who not only saw the problem clearly, but brought people together to find solutions.
In 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called for a “radical redistribution of political and economic power” to address poverty, war, and racism. To do so, he turned to those who were on the frontlines of these crises, not those who perpetrated them.
He worked tirelessly to organize the original Poor People’s Campaign, bringing together welfare advocates, farm workers unions, antiwar advocates, and Native, Chicano, Puerto Rican, and poor white organizers together with the civil rights movement.
King never wavered in his commitment to unite those who’d been divided for too long by politics, race, religion, and geography. “It has been one of my dreams that we would come together and realize our common problems,” he said just a few weeks before his assassination, and to “make the power structure of this nation say yes, when they may be desirous to say no.”
More than 50 years later, the power structures of our nation are invested in systems and structures that are destroying our lives and our planet.
We know that those invested in the status quo won’t come forth with solutions to these crises that compromise their interests.
A new report from Oxfam USA, for example, blames the wealthiest people in the world for our climate breakdown — not only because of their lavish lifestyles, but also their influence on politics, media, and the economy. Every year their emissions cancel out the carbon savings of some of the best green technologies we have. The report calls for a “radical increase in equality” to save our planet.
We know that those invested in the status quo won’t come forth with solutions to these crises that compromise their interests. That’s true whether we’re talking about the climate, inequality, poverty, or war. The answers will come from those who are confronting these systems directly.
And that’s the good news. In many places, people standing up against injustice are shifting what’s possible.
This fall, the United Auto Workers went on strike for six weeks, targeting each of the “Big Three” auto manufacturers. To confront these corporate behemoths, who’ve extracted nearly $250 billion in profits over the past decade by exploiting workers, the UAW called on specific locals to “stand up” and strike, while others continued to work even with expired contracts.
President Shawn Fain rallied their members over social media, reminding them they weren’t trying to wreck the economy, but to wreck “their” economy — the economy of the Big Three and Wall Street.
This is what hope looks like in times of great crisis, war, and inequality.
This clarity helped maintain the union’s united front. It shaped their demands for higher wages, better benefits for all workers, and an end to tiered wages. Significantly, it opened the door for workers to influence the electric vehicle market — breaking new ground for labor to find common cause with the climate movement. The union’s wins were nothing short of historic.
More recently, the UAW became the largest union to join the call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. This is not just a testament to the union, but to the many, many others who are coming together across politics, race, religion, and geography to demand peace, life, and freedom for Palestinians as well as Israelis.
This is what hope looks like in times of great crisis, war, and inequality. It’s not foolishly romantic to celebrate this hope. It’s what gives us the courage and compassion to stand up another day, to find each other, and to make what seems impossible, possible.
May it be so.
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