NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently said this: “The Russians have only a $2 trillion economy compared to a $50 trillion economy for NATO but are producing four times more in terms of ammunition. NATO’s job is to make sure that collectively we have what we need to prevent us from taking Russian language courses.” Mr. Rutte followed that statement with a proposal under which each alliance member would devote a total of 5 percent of GDP to defense spending.

The secretary general’s proposal was adopted at this week’s NATO summit in The Hague. It allows individual countries to count up to 1.5 percentage points of GDP for tangential defense investments such as hardening roads for military transport. That means the target for core defense spending will rise to 3.5 percent of GDP from the current 2 percent.

The 5-percent-of-GDP spending target was first suggested by President Trump, who has long complained about the other NATO members not contributing enough to the collective defense budget. Many observers have said that the other NATO leaders embraced the proposal in an attempt to please President Trump and encourage him to remain committed to the alliance. Member countries are required to reach the newly set spending goal by 2035.

Mr. Rutte clearly sees danger ahead. As he rightly points out, when it comes to arms production, NATO is quite far behind Russia. I already speak Russian so I wouldn’t have to learn the language, as the secretary general fears we might be forced to do. Nonetheless, I have no appetite to live in a world ruled by Russia’s totalitarian regime. I share Mr. Rutte’s concern that NATO needs to take an urgent and comprehensive look at its defensive capabilities.

According to a recent Washington Post article, Russia currently spends over 7 percent of its GDP on defense. That level of spending is expected to continue even after the war in Ukraine ends. Last year, the U.S. devoted 3.38 percent of its GDP to military expenditures, whereas some NATO members such as Spain (1.28%) and Canada (1.37%) came nowhere close to meeting the existing 2 percent target. Based on that underperformance, the new goal of 5 percent will be extremely difficult to reach for such members of the alliance.

Echoing Mr. Rutte’s concern about Russia, a top British defense strategist quoted in the Washington Post article warned that Europe needs to re-arm “at the speed of fear.” General Chris Cavoli, Commander of the U.S. European Command, reportedly told the Senate Armed Services Committee recently that Russia is replacing troops, tanks and munitions “at an unprecedented pace.” He said that this year, Russia’s factories will manufacture 1,500 tanks compared with America’s 135 and 3,000 armored vehicles versus no new production of infantry fighting vehicles by the U.S. General Cavoli further mentioned that Russia is producing 250,000 shells per month, “putting it on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the United States and Europe combined.” In his words, “Filling 3 million shells per year requires prodigious amounts of explosives.”

Clearly, NATO has to up its game. However, one has to wonder whether trying to match the pace and scale of Russia’s defense spending and arms production is the best way to counter its threat. As everyone knows, the lifeblood of Russia’s relatively insignificant $2 trillion dollar economy is its combined oil and gas revenues. It has been plainly obvious to NATO leaders for a long time that the quickest and most efficient way to bring Vladimir Putin’s Russia to its knees is to use sanctions to choke off those funding sources, which sustain its military. The problem is that the alliance’s members haven’t used this powerful tool effectively. That is a shame.

We’ve heard incessant talk about the raft of sanctions imposed on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. They have so far failed to deter Putin’s aggression for two main reasons. First, Western leaders have withheld some of the most potent measures. Second, the sanctions have been enforced rather poorly.

The timid application of sanctions has been by design. Western political leaders fear that going full throttle on the punitive measures would risk destabilizing global oil and gas markets, leading to higher energy prices for their citizens. That caution might seem wise, but it is shortsighted. It is pay now or pay later.

With a GDP approaching $30 trillion, the U.S. could be spending $1.5 trillion annually on defense within a few years (assuming it chooses to meet the 5 percent target that President Trump himself called for). The proposed tax cuts in the president’s Big Beautiful Bill are designed to spur economic growth. It means that in future years, military expenditures could technically exceed the already eye-popping $1.5 trillion figure. Collectively, NATO, with its current total GDP of $50 trillion, could soon be spending up to $2.5 trillion on defense each year. The question needs to be asked again: Isn’t there a more efficient way to deal with this Russia problem to allow these trillions of dollars to be freed up for more useful purposes?

Admittedly, there are threats not only from Russia, but also from China and the likes of Iran and North Korea, making all that additional military spending warranted perhaps. But Russia is obviously the immediate problem. And one could argue that the most effective way to minimize the dangers posed by the remaining adversaries is to quickly counter the Russian menace to forestall the axis that they are actively collaborating to create. So, what is the sense in trying to save a few cents off the price of a gallon of gas today when it means that we would have to later spend trillions of dollars in perpetuity to deal with the same problem? It appears that we are perfectly content with living free of pain today and passing on the burden to our children and grandchildren.

NATO leaders irresponsibly kicked the can down the road these past three years by doing lots of talking but not taking decisive action to push Russia back in Ukraine. But the biggest problem facing the alliance today is President Trump’s reluctance to impose sanctions on Russia. It is quite apparent that without U.S. involvement, any sanctions package the Europeans and Canadians put together now would lack bite. The president promised to end the war in Ukraine on day one. Strangely, he is unwilling to use the most powerful tool at his disposal.

It wasn’t a bad idea for President Trump to try to leverage his personal relationship with Putin to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war. But it should be clear to him by now that the Russian dictator is not interested in peace. He wants Ukraine to surrender, something the Ukrainians will never do. President Trump therefore needs to figure out what his priority should be: preserving his friendship with Putin, or safeguarding the interest of this great nation that he presides over.

In the business world, company bosses always tell their staff to work smarter, not harder. Employees are supposed to find the most efficient ways of accomplishing tasks, not simply spend long ours doing things laboriously. NATO leaders have to ask themselves whether in their dealings with Russia, they are working smarter or harder. They appear to be doing the latter. Here in America, we need to be looking for ways to reduce our perennial budget deficits. Does spending $1.5 trillion or more every year just on defense seem like a good idea to us?