On March 26th, as tradition dictates, the NATO Secretary General published his annual report; a document that serves to take stock of the international situation, to analyze the looming threats to the Atlantic Alliance (and beyond) as well as the type of response being given to them and, last but not least, to also provide an updated overview of the commitment of member countries on the military spending front.
And it is precisely on this last point that the interest of the Italian press, as well as part of the political sphere, ended up focusing. More specifically, the greatest attention was drawn by the fact that this report recalls how in 2025 all NATO countries (including Italy) will have reached the “old” target of 2% of GDP; and the fact that to achieve this result our country would have (the conditional is mandatory) enacted a significant increase in defense spending between 2024 and 2025.
Well, it must be immediately clarified that all this interest, accompanied by the usual unfounded controversies, to be honest appears quite incomprehensible. For two very simple reasons.
Proceeding in order, the first reason concerns the 2% issue; here it is recalled that already last June, a few days before the NATO summit in The Hague, Secretary Rutte had announced that all countries had now been able to formalize the achievement of this goal. This anticipation was promptly confirmed by the periodic update on the military spending framework published by the Atlantic Alliance itself just two months later; that is, at the end of August.
From this update, appropriately supplemented by some new data contained in Rutte’s report, the figures at stake for Italy become clearer. According to these data, it emerges that our country communicated to NATO a level of defense spending for 2025 amounting to €45,315 million, equivalent precisely to 2.01% of GDP. A value therefore significantly higher than the €33,402 million of 2024 (i.e., about + €11,900 million). And it was precisely this striking variation that became the reason for this so incomprehensible “attention”; with more than one party ready to emphasize, out of ignorance or demagogy, the fact that it would have been determined by a real increase in resources allocated to the sector. An increase of such proportions that, just to be clear, never actually happened!
LET’S CLARIFY
The defense budget between 2024 and 2025 in fact did not grow by the €11.9 billion mentioned above; the actual increase in resources was in reality only about €3 billion, with the remaining €8.9 billion resulting from simple reclassifications of expenditure items already existing within the state budget and now transformed into military spending. In fact, a simple accounting alchemy that allowed this sudden (and “miraculous”) achievement of the 2% target.
And make no mistake, these are certainly not reserved considerations or notes known only to insiders. For months it was discussed and written about last year, just before the NATO summit in the Netherlands took place. Already in April 2025, in fact, the rumors circulating for weeks in the press began to become more substantial; and shortly thereafter they found official confirmation from the Government itself.
During a “question time” in the Chamber of Deputies, on May 21st the same Minister of Defense definitively confirmed it, referring in very general terms to a new approach that led to including in the calculations unspecified expenses related to space, synergies with the Guardia di Finanza and Coast Guard, and finally a greater effort required from the Carabinieri.
The Minister’s promise was then to provide Parliament with more details through the 2025-2027 Multi-Year Programmatic Document; but even the arrival of the latter in the following October fails in any way to dispel doubts about this so “reckless” operation. It only refers (again very generally) to the inclusion of: “Budgets for contexts, domains and sectors to which a more military focus has been assigned” and to “Military cooperation projects (e.g.: Military Mobility).”
One more clue finally comes from the analysis of the numbers contained in the already mentioned NATO Secretary General’s report. This document shows an interesting figure, that of personnel units classified as “Military personnel”: 193,700. However, since the armed forces’ personnel numbers are known and amount to 163,900 units, it becomes evident that the difference between the two values (almost 30,000 “military”) was determined precisely by the inclusion in this count of significant shares of personnel from the Carabinieri Corps, the Guardia di Finanza, and the Coast Guard – Port Authorities.
IS ITALY THEREFORE “CHEATING”?
The answer to this question (also provocative, certainly) can only be one, namely: yes. But not just recently, moreover. Because if it is true that what happened just last year represents an anomaly of truly significant proportions, the sums communicated by our country to the Atlantic Alliance have already suffered from a glaring lack of clarity for several years.
To the point that, through the use of a series of physically available budget data, crossed with estimates elaborated on what is instead not precisely available and finally integrated with the analysis of the historical series of military spending itself, it is possible to conclude that the “real” financial commitment in defense updated to 2025 can be estimated at about €33 billion, rather than €45.3 billion. A really important difference (over €12 billion); with a percentage of GDP that in turn drops from 2.01% to less than 1.5%. And always bearing in mind that the classification criteria adopted by NATO are characterized by the adoption of sometimes questionable expenditure items, insofar as they easily allow budgets to be “inflated.”
In all this, an important consideration. If from a political point of view the operation carried out by Italy (and, to be fair, also by some other countries) has its justification in the current context characterized by the maximalist positions of President Trump, from a more practical nature it can only be criticized.
And here a fundamental point must be clarified; reaching certain levels of military spending (including the new 5% parameter) is not in itself the goal of the ongoing rearmament process. On the contrary, it is more simply the tool to be used to achieve the true final objective, namely to acquire the multiple operational capabilities necessary to fulfill defense missions; national and collective (with reference to the international organizations of which we are part).
Therefore, inserting in such a massive way items that have little or nothing to do with the true security needs of the country remains a short-sighted choice and certainly not consistent with the challenges of the current (and very complicated) historical context in which we are living.
ITALY MUST BECOME SERIOUS ABOUT DEFENSE
Once again, therefore, what emerges from this affair is Italy’s overall inability to face these issues lucidly. Whether it is politics, media, or public opinion, in the end attitudes (and behaviors) prevail that are characterized by irrationality, little or no correct information, systematic underestimation, demagogy, and cheap populism.
That is why it comes naturally to say that our country would need a “cultural rearmament” before even a material one; a process capable of bringing (in the widest possible way) the acquisition of the necessary level of strategic and defense culture to make the definitive qualitative leap. Because the truth in the end is that many still do not understand (or pretend not to understand…) the importance of investing in security; and if this fundamental step is missing, maturing the necessary awareness to make the most appropriate choices precisely in defense matters becomes simply utopian.
