This is part six of a series examining the challenges confronting the .
As President Donald Trump presses NATO allies to shoulder more of Europe’s defense burden, countries closest to are moving fastest â while some of Western Europe’s biggest economies face growing pressure to catch up.Â
Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and former deputy director for strategy, policy and plans at U.S. European Command, said the shift is already visible across the alliance.
“Europe is clearly stepping up, but they’re stepping up by geographic variation,” Montgomery told Fox News Digital.
“If you ask me who’s doing the most, the Eastern Europeans are clearly.”
Montgomery pointed to the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Bulgaria as countries moving aggressively to strengthen deterrence against Russia.
His assessment comes as NATO allies work toward a new defense spending benchmark agreed at the 2025 summit in The Hague, which calls on members to invest 5% of GDP in defense and security-related spending by 2035, including 3.5% for core defense requirements and 1.5% for defense-related infrastructure and security investments.
John Deni, a research professor at the War College, said the trend shouldn’t be surprising.Â
“Given the threat of Russia, allies in the East are acquiring capabilities more quickly, and they’re spending even more than allies in the West,” Deni told Fox News Digital. “This shouldn’t surprise us because they’re the ones closest to the threat.”
Deni noted that many eastern allies are rapidly purchasing equipment already available on the market rather than waiting years for domestic defense programs to mature.
The transformation is visible across NATO’s eastern and northern flanks. Poland has become one of the alliance’s largest military spenders, Romania is increasing defense investments, and Finland and have added advanced military capabilities to NATO following their accession.
Secretary of State praised Finland and Sweden Thursday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, using them as examples of allies strengthening the alliance.
“Sweden and Finland have actually contributed because they brought their own defense industry, their own advanced technology,” Rubio said. “They have been great partners.”Â
Romanian Foreign Minister Oana-Silvia Å¢oiu echoed that message in an interview with Fox News Digital following an emergency U.N. Security Council session convened after a in the Romanian city of GalaÈi.
“We do agree with President Trump on the need to increase budgets,” Å¢oiu said.
Å¢oiu said Romania raised defense spending to 2% of GDP during Trump’s previous term and plans to allocate “an average of 3.4 percent” next year through military procurement and strategic infrastructure investments.
“We have launched initiatives that are directed at the eastern flank because it is increasingly more clear that that needs to be protected,” she said.
She argued that Romania’s role extends beyond .
“We need better deterrence, better defense capabilities there in order to ensure our responsibility in protecting not just the Romanian border, which is the longest border to the war, but also it is in the same time a European border and the border of the Allied territory,” Å¢oiu said.
For frontline states, the urgency is driven by geography as much as politics. Romania shares a border with and repeatedly has dealt with Russian drones entering its airspace. Poland has become one of NATO’s top military spenders, while the Baltic states are racing toward defense expenditures approaching 5% of GDP.
Montgomery said the eastern flank’s urgency contrasts sharply with the pace in much of Western Europe.
Among the continent’s five largest economies, and despite a slight decrease in military spending in 2025, the U.K. remains the largest in
