Polish leader will push for increase in NATO spending to fight Russia

Poland’s president plans to use a White House meeting with President Biden on Tuesday to propose that most NATO countries increase their military spending by at least half to meet what he sees as the growing threat of Russian aggression against Europe and the United States.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had made it clear that NATO must take more seriously the possibility that Moscow might turn against one or more members of the alliance. To prepare for that, he said, each NATO country should spend at least 3 percent of its own economy on military needs, up from the current target of 2 percent.

“A return to the status quo ante is not possible,” Mr Duda said wrote in The Washington Post before the meeting at the White House on Tuesday. “Russia’s imperialist ambitions and aggressive revisionism are pushing Moscow toward direct confrontation with NATO, with the West and ultimately with the entire free world.” He noted that Russia had “put its economy on war mode” and spent nearly 30 percent of its budget on weapons. “Vladimir Putin’s regime poses the greatest threat to world peace since the end of the Cold War.”

The proposal to increase NATO’s military spending may not be quickly adopted by many allies who have not yet met even the 2 percent target. But it reflects the tension within the alliance between its easternmost members, who feel most vulnerable to Russian revanchism, and its westernmost members, who are less worried and more eager for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine.

Mr Biden will meet Mr Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland to mark the 25th anniversary of the accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to NATO, as he emphasizes the need to do more to help Ukraine fend off Russian invaders keep out. Legislation to provide Ukraine with an additional $60 billion in security assistance is currently stalled in Congress despite strong bipartisan support.

The president is likely to use the meeting to strengthen his commitment to NATO at a time when his rival in the fall election, former President Donald J. Trump, has threatened to break up the alliance. Mr. Trump recently said that as president he told a NATO leader that not only would he not come to the defense of allies who had not spent enough money, but that he would also “encourage” Russia to attack them.

“A former president actually said that while bowing to a Russian leader,” Biden said in his State of the Union address last week. “I find it outrageous, dangerous and unacceptable.”

The last few presidents have pushed NATO to do more for its own defense, and alliance leaders agreed to the 2 percent target in 2014, but it was a non-binding target to be achieved by 2024. Mr. Trump was more bellicose than his predecessors when he demanded that. allies increased their military spending and talked about it as if they owed the money to the United States, which was not true.

Under Trump, the number of NATO members meeting the 2 percent target has increased from six to nine. Under Mr. Biden, it has doubled to 18This reflects growing fear of Russia since its large-scale invasion of Ukraine, a non-NATO state, in 2022. Two additional members have just joined NATO, Finland and Sweden, bringing the total number of members to 32.

Poland, which already spends almost 4 percent of its economy on its military, tops the list and can therefore afford to push others to increase their spending without any additional commitments on its part. The United States follows with 3.5 percent, and most of the other top spenders are in Eastern Europe, closer to Russia. Together, European allies will spend 2 percent of their combined gross domestic product this year, or $380 billion.

The visit by Poland’s leaders on Tuesday will be the first since a historic election in October, when opposition parties defeated the ruling Law and Justice party, a right-wing faction that has caused concern across Europe and the United States in recent years as it consolidated power . over major institutions such as the judiciary, the news media, the central bank and large state-controlled companies.

While Mr. Duda was a Law and Justice ally and favored by Mr. Trump when he was in power, Mr. Tusk is a veteran centrist widely respected in European capitals and Washington. He was installed as the new prime minister in December, returning to the post he held from 2007 to 2014, when he often worked with Mr Biden, who was then vice president.