TRACKING NATO SPENDING

Trackers and Data Visualizations

Jun 20, 2025

NATO Defense Spending Tracker

By Kristen Taylor

The Transatlantic Security Initiative’s NATO defense spending tracker delves into data and figures to analyze current defense spending trends.

Europe & Eurasia NATO

FEATURED READING

FEATURED EVENTS

TUNE IN

Programs and initiatives

The Transatlantic Security Initiative, in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, shapes and influences the debate on the greatest security challenges facing the North Atlantic Alliance and its key partners.

Content

Issue Brief

Aug 14, 2014

Why nuclear deterrence still matters to NATO

By Matthew Kroenig and Walter B. Slocombe

Over the past two decades, nuclear weapons have been deemphasized in NATO planning, but this should not be interpreted to mean that the Alliance has abandoned the core principle that a nuclear attack will meet a nuclear response, or that NATO will not retain the necessary means to deliver such a response. In the latest […]

Europe & Eurasia NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, March 2, 2014

NATOSource

Aug 14, 2014

NATO’s Crucial Summit

By F. Stephen Larrabee and Ian J. Brzezinski, CNN GPS

Just weeks before its scheduled September 4 summit in Wales, NATO is bogged down in bureaucratic wrangling and losing important momentum.

NATO Russia

In the News

Aug 14, 2014

Brzezinski on NATO’s Crucial Summit

By Ian Brzezinski

Scowcroft Center Senior Fellow Ian Brzezinski writes for CNN.com, with RAND’s Stephen Larrabee, on the upcoming NATO Summit in Wales: 

NATO Security & Defense
"Disengagement is misguided and dangerous"

NATOSource

Aug 14, 2014

US Disengagement from International Leadership is ‘Misguided and Dangerous’

By Richard Fontaine and Michèle Flournoy, National Interest

The United States has sought to disengage from Iraq and Afghanistan, placing more emphasis on when our troops would come home than on how we would protect our national interests as those wars end.

China NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg, August 14, 2014

NATOSource

Aug 14, 2014

Special Summit Series: Norway and NATO

By Magnus Nordenman

Norway is in many ways a unique NATO member that currently finds itself in an advantageous position in comparison to its fellow European allies.

Europe & Eurasia NATO
NATO exercise in Slovakia, June 17, 2013

NATOSource

Aug 13, 2014

NATO Summit Must Make Further Progress on Smart Defense

By Richard Weitz, World Politics Review

Next month’s NATO summit needs to make greater progress on so-called Smart Defense, the alliance-wide effort to get more collective benefits out of individual members’ defense budgets.

NATO Security & Defense
A cave facility in Norway used by the US military, 1997

NATOSource

Aug 13, 2014

Pentagon Increasing Its Arsenal of Weapons in Norway’s Caves

By Dan Lamothe, Washington Post

In the heart of Norway’s countryside, the U.S. military is bolstering its arsenal of weapons with tanks, gun trucks and other armored vehicles along with hundreds of containers of equipment.

Iraq NATO
Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Dec. 4, 2013

NATOSource

Aug 12, 2014

NATO Chief Sees ‘High Probability’ of Russian Military Intervention in Ukraine

By Adrian Croft, Reuters

NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Monday he saw a “high probability” that Russia could intervene militarily in eastern Ukraine and that NATO detected no sign that Moscow was pulling back thousands of troops from close to the Ukrainian border.

NATO Russia
US/UK flags

NATOSource

Aug 12, 2014

US-UK Relationship: ‘Not Only Special, But Essential’

By Matthew Barzun, US Department of State

We are drawing down our presence in Afghanistan, but stepping up our support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and intimidation.

NATO Security & Defense
USS Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean Sea, Aug. 5, 2013

NATOSource

Aug 12, 2014

Why is the Mediterranean Relatively Peaceful?

By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review

For the last 70 years, the Mediterranean has been quieter than at any other time in its long history . . . Why?

Middle East NATO

Experts