Poland’s president on Monday called on fellow NATO members to increase defense spending to 3% of gross domestic product as Russia puts its economy on a war footing and advances its invasion of Ukraine.
President Andrzej Duda made the call in speeches at home and abroad. His call comes on the eve of a visit to the White House, where US President Joe Biden is due to meet Duda and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Tuesday.
“NATO members must take bold and uncompromising action in the face of the war in Ukraine and Russia’s growing imperial ambitions,” Duda said in a speech to his country late on Monday.
He made the appeal on March 12, 1999, as Poland, together with the Czech Republic and Hungary, celebrated the 25th anniversary of its membership of NATO.Duda made the above remarks on the same day The Swedish flag was raised at NATO headquarters in Brussels, cementing its status as the alliance’s 32nd member state.
“Poland is proud to have been involved for 25 years,” he said. “There was and is no better guarantor of security than the North Atlantic Alliance.”
“The war in Ukraine has made it clear that the United States is and should continue to play a leading role on European and world security issues,” Duda said in a speech to his country. “However, other NATO countries must also assume greater responsibility for the security of the entire Alliance and significantly modernize and strengthen their military forces.”
NATO members agreed in 2014 to increase defense spending to 2% of gross domestic product after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, but most members, including Germany, have still not met that benchmark. .
However, Poland now spends 4% of its GDP on defense, making it the member state that spends the highest percentage on military modernization, while the United States spends well above 3%.
“Russia’s imperial ambitions and aggressive revisionism are pushing Moscow into direct confrontation with NATO, the West and the entire free world,” Duda said in a statement published on Washington post.
Duda said this allowed the United States and Poland to “lead by example and provide inspiration to other countries.”
“The Russian Federation has shifted its economy to war mode. It is allocating nearly 30% of its annual budget to arming itself,” Duda noted in a newspaper column. “This number and other figures from Russia are shocking. Vladimir Putin’s regime poses the greatest threat to global peace since World War II.” The Cold War is over. ”
The Biden administration says Duda’s call for higher defense spending targets among NATO countries may appear too ambitious, at least for now.
“I think the first step is to get every country up to the 2% threshold, and we’ve seen improvements in that,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. “But I think this is the first step before we start talking about additional proposals.”
Duda will travel to Brussels to meet NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg after visiting the United States
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