At the 2025 NATO summit in The Hague, all members committed to a 5 percent defense spending target to protect against threats to the bloc, and to make sure the Allies were sharing the burden. Of the nations close to this target, it is those on or near the border with Russia—Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Latvia especially—who are leading the charge.

Spending, however, only tells part of the story. These nations' war-readiness is about budgets, but also whether the entire state is able to resist attack. States which offer NATO a new model of defense are not necessarily those spending the most, but those that have spent decades assuming they might be next.

Despite, or perhaps because of their size, and proximity to Vladimir Putin's Russia, this total war defense is what Eastern European countries have been building. These are the states ready for conflict.

Estimates from 2025 place Poland’s defense spending at 4.3 percent of its GDP, Lithuania at 4 percent, Latvia at 3.7 percent, Estonia at 3.4 percent, and then Denmark at 3.3 percent. Barring Poland, these are relatively small countries—Estonia on the Baltic has a population of only 1.34 million.

Their plans, as well as years of resistance to Russia, in contrast to Western apathy, offer a far broader understanding of defense, and are putting the rest of Europe to shame.

This is partly because the Baltics and Poland learned harsh lessons from history.

These states stand out in terms of defense because of their suffering under past Russian invasions. All three Baltic states and Poland were occupied by the Soviet Union; the Baltics in 1940, Poland in 1939.

The Baltic states endured Soviet occupation until 1991. This was brutal and repressive, with deportations, exile, and the Russification of society.

After 1945, Poland was coerced into the Soviet-led communist bloc until 1989.

Eastern Europe understands the costs of imperial Russian politics, and realized early that the threat from Russia had not disappeared.

They also realized it might have changed in form. Despite the collapse of the Soviet Union and national independence in 1991, these nations sensed their vulnerability to Russia.

In 2007, for example, Estonia was hit with a large-scale cyberattack at a time when the country disagreed with Russia over the controversial Bronze Soldier of Tallinn war memorial commemorating Soviet soldiers. After Estonia relocated the memorial, a series of cyberattacks—from Russian IP addresses—devastated Estonian governmental websites, media sites, and banking sites.

The Baltics and Poland also saw more militaristic Russian repression elsewhere, including in Georgia in 2008, and Crimea in 2014, as part of a pattern of historical Russian aggression.

For Western Europe, though, the Russian threat had been apparently eliminated. With the end of the Cold War, Russia was seen as a new trade partner and energy supplier: Germany received 52 percent of its gas from Russia in 2021, the year before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

There were also hopes in the West that the end of tensions would precipitate an optimism and peace in Europe—with the concomitant effect of military capabilities reducing, as the West played down any threat.

Germany’s troops fell from 585,000 in 1990 to 177,000 in 2016, while the UK’s army has fallen by 30 percent since 2000 to 2024. Many European states also ended conscription. Meanwhile, the focus of security turned to NATO and the U.S.

The Baltic states and Poland never accepted those assumptions. Poland joined NATO in 1999 and the Baltics in 2004, and started modernizing their armies and reinvesting in defense after Russian aggression elsewhere. Latvia and Lithuania reinstated conscription in the 2010s and 2020s; recently Lithuania reported a record number of volunteers for military service.

They also began to demand hard security guarantees from NATO, especially in relation to Article 5, which promises the alliance will defend any member state if under attack.

These defense plans have only escalated since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with the construction of a 950 km defense line against Russia, including bunkers, dragon’s teeth, and minefields. This is designed to complement the East Shield program in Poland, which aims to be implemented by 2028, to defend Poland against the borders of Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

The latter is often seen as a potential flashpoint for tensions, especially the Suwałki Gap, on the border between Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Kaliningrad.

Poland is also set to have the largest army in the European Union, and second in NATO to the U.S.

But most notable is their investment in modern technology, and the need for defense against shadow warfare, or attacks against civilians. After the devastating cyberattacks, Estonia embraced a policy of "total defense," investing in cybersecurity and training to ensure the safety of the country’s digital resources—including practicing cyberattacks, and opening a data embassy in Luxembourg to store the nation-state’s largely-digital records.

The Baltic states have been investing in schooling to ensure civilians are ready for war, including training children in the use of drones, and preparing hospitals for conflict. This is also missing in Western Europe, where defense budgets are often focused on spending, rather than adapting contemporary warfare.

Eastern Europe has also understood energy dependency as a tool of war, and began to invest in green solutions to avoid dependency on Russia—including Lithuania, which set up a liquefied natural gas terminal in 2014 which enabled it to become the first nation in Europe to completely wean itself off Russian gas.

Amid President Donald Trump’s criticism of Western European defense spending, America’s and NATO's focus on countries which shoulder the most responsibility should also be on those which function under pressure.

For decades, the Baltic states and Poland were treated as NATO’s weakest members. Now, it is precisely this weakness which is allowing these states to innovate and transform defense in Europe.

The message for their partners to the West is clear.

Juliette Bretan teaches at the Faculty of English at Cambridge University and previously worked as a research assistant for the Centre for Geopolitics at Cambridge.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.