June 2025 will be remembered as the month NATO officially gave up the pretence that military spending was anything other than an economic doctrine. At The Hague summit, the alliance’s thirty-two members agreed to increase defence and security expenditure to 5% of GDP by 2035. Not just 2%, as per the old post-Cold War consensus. Not 3.5%, which is the proposed baseline for direct military capabilities. But 5%—an unprecedented siphoning of public money into the war industries of the Euro-Atlantic world, under the banner of “resilience” and “readiness”.
Only one country refused. Spain.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, under intense pressure from Trump’s White House, from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and from European allies jostling for favour in the new multipolar scramble, said no. In a blunt letter issued just hours before the final declaration was adopted, Sánchez denounced the 5% target as incompatible with Spain’s welfare commitments, economically damaging, and politically indefensible. He is now being cast as NATO’s villain, a pariah in an otherwise obedient bloc. But that’s because he’s the only one telling the truth.
What Spain understands (what others pretend not to) is that this isn’t about defence. It’s about discipline. Austerity for the public. Profits for the arms trade. The 5% figure, cooked up in Washington and Brussels to appease Trump and sell contracts to Raytheon, Rheinmetall and Thales, has no grounding in actual strategic need. It’s a number designed to be symbolic: a show of fealty, a geopolitical tithe. Obey, and you get the protection racket. Disobey, and you’re told you’ll pay “twice as much” in tariffs, as Trump openly threatened Spain.
Sánchez is not a peacenik. In April, his government approved a €10.4 billion increase in military spending—half of which, conveniently, was redirected from EU funds earmarked for green transition and digital transformation. But when it came to endorsing a framework that will, over the next decade, reconfigure the very structure of state spending across Europe, Sánchez drew a line. Unlike Germany, which removed debt rules only for military spending, or Britain, whose Labour government is eyeing cuts elsewhere to fund rearmament, Spain argued that public money must still serve public needs.
Predictably, the backlash has been ferocious. Trump labelled Spain a free rider. NATO officials claimed Sánchez had betrayed alliance unity. Even so-called moderates like Sweden’s Ulf Kristersson and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen lined up to denounce the Spanish “opt-out”. Meanwhile, hawkish commentators mutter darkly about “socialists” and “solidarity”, as if a country refusing to dismantle its welfare state is somehow the real threat to European security. It seems Spain is the only country without daddy issues.
But look beyond the summit theatrics and you’ll see the deeper truth: most of NATO’s members cannot afford this new target. Italy, Portugal, Belgium, and even France have voiced concerns behind closed doors. Canada is asking for “flexibility”. Belgium wants “maximum flexibility”. The only difference is that Spain said it out loud.
There is a desperate scramble now to redefine what counts as “defence-related”: cybersecurity, infrastructure, disaster response, even pension reform. All in an effort to fudge the figures and keep up appearances. But this is theatre. The real play is economic. The rearmament drive now underway is not just about tanks and drones—it is the functional replacement of the post-war welfare state with a militarised state. A new military Keynesianism, justified by Putin, turbocharged by Trump, and legitimised by the EU Commission’s ReArm Europe programme, which shifts hundreds of billions from social investment into armaments under a temporary budget exemption.
Spain’s refusal punctures the consensus. It forces the question: who really benefits from this massive reallocation of public funds? Not the working-class woman in Madrid facing rent hikes. Not the child in Ljubljana whose school roof still leaks. Not the overstretched hospital in Leeds or the pensioner in Naples. The beneficiaries are the defence contractors, the surveillance firms, and the ruling parties who think showing loyalty to Trump is the price of survival.
And perhaps it is. But if that’s the deal, it deserves to be exposed for what it is. A shit one. Sánchez’s dissent reveals the quiet fraud at the heart of NATO’s new strategy. It isn’t unity. It’s coercion. And if the price of unity is the demolition of what remains of social democracy in Europe, then Spain is right to say no.
For once, the country accused of being the alliance’s problem may be its last flicker of moral clarity.
