NATO’s decade-long battle to boost defense spending

The U.K.'s new Labour government has promised to spend 2.5 percent of GDP on defense, with calls mounting on ensuring steady spending increases regardless of economic performance. "What the Ministry of Defence really needs is a guarantee of steady and substantial real-terms growth each year for a decade or more," said Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense think tank.