European defense spending is always a point of consternation.
There's a winding and endless debate about who's spending what and which countries are pulling their weight.
It's a murky debate too because NATO members vary in population, physical size, and economic might.
However, there is one undeniable, immutable fact about Western defense spending...
It's going up.
Collective spending by the NATO alliance has gone up in each of the past six years, and 2023 will be the fourth consecutive year in which it tops $1 trillion.
A lot of that momentum can be attributed to the United States, which has raised its defense spending by more than $100 billion in that time, but our partners in the alliance are doing their part as well.
NATO Europe and Canada are set to see an 8.3% increase in defense expenditure this year the biggest bump in decades and the latest in a streak dating back to 2015.
As a result, 11 member states will meet or exceed NATO's defense investment target of 2% of GDP this year.
That's up from seven in 2022 and just three in 2014.
And that's still just a third of NATO's 31 members, which means there's plenty of room for improvement.
Several countries are in striking distance, too.