Pledge and Forget? Testing the Effects of NATO’s Wales Pledge on Defense Investment

By Jordan Becker

23.1.2024

International Studies Perspectives

Do informal international agreements without coercive mechanisms affect states’ behaviour? While scholars have long been interested in this question, answering it often poses empirical challenges, particularly in the arena of international security. By asking and answering a narrower question—Is NATO’s Wales Pledge on defence spending working?—I can empirically test the extent to which states have adhered to a public agreement without formal or coercive enforcement mechanisms. I argue that the Wales Pledge has led to higher spending because NATO the organisation uniquely enables allies to influence one another’s defence planning, publicly and privately. I find support for this argument by interrogating disaggregated defence expenditures of NATO and EU members, and by comparing NATO allies Denmark and Norway with non-allies Finland and Sweden. Although the Wales Pledge has been maligned, it served its purpose by encouraging allies to spend more on defence, particularly on equipment modernisation.

Read more