Armed Conflict Foreign Relations & International Law

Lawfare Daily: The Fallacy of NATO's New Spending Target

Anastasiia Lapatina, Minna Ålander, Max Bergmann
Tuesday, August 5, 2025, 7:00 AM
How impactful is NATO's new spending target?

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On today’s episode, Lawfare’s Ukraine Fellow Anastasiia Lapatina sits down with Minna Ålander, an associate fellow at Chatham House Europe Programme, and Max Bergmann, the Director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, to discuss NATO’s historic decision to increase its member state’s defense spending to 5% of their Gross Domestic Product. 

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Anastasiia Lapatina is a Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare. She previously worked as a national reporter at Kyiv Independent, writing about social and political issues. She also hosted and produced podcasts “This Week in Ukraine” and “Power Lines: From Ukraine to the World.” For her work, she was featured in the “25 Under 25” list of top young journalists by Ukraine’s Media Development Foundation, as well as “Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe” class of 2022 in the category Media and Marketing.
Minna Ålander is research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) in Helsinki. Her research topics are German and Finnish foreign and security policy, Northern European security and Nordic defence cooperation. Previously, she worked at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin.
Max Bergmann is the director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program and the Stuart Center in Euro-Atlantic and Northern European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
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