Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis has told Washington what it doesn't want to hear: Czechia will not accelerate defense spending beyond the 2% of GDP target it hopes to reach in 2027. US envoy to NATO Matthew Whitaker delivered the demand in person in Prague last week, but Babis pushed back, insisting the government simply cannot afford it. The numbers tell a different story. The 2027 budget Babis's government approved on September 22 targets a deficit of 386 billion Czech crowns (€15.8 billion) — the country's second-highest ever. The spending expansion is generous, directed at pensions, education, healthcare, and infrastructure. These are the election promises of the ANO party and its coalition partners, the far-right SPD and the radical-right Motorists for Themselves. Defense was not among those promises. The coalition's composition explains the trajectory. ANO's electorate is populist and anti-Ukrainian but also pro-Western — a combination that produces a 2% ceiling as the politically optimal number. But Babis governs with extremist partners whose voters are openly pro-Russian. The SPD, which controls the defense ministry, actually pushed to cut the 2027 defense budget further. Babis must speak two languages at once, which he attempted to do by appearing in a "No War" T-shirt two days after Whitaker's visit while simultaneously affirming NATO membership. The regional contrast is stark. Poland and the Baltic States have already met NATO's new 3.5% target and will hit 5% next year. Prague spent 1.86% of GDP on defense last year and cut to around 1.7% for 2026. This gap exists despite Czechia's direct experience with Russian hybrid warfare — the BIS intelligence service confirmed in 2021 that Russian FSB agents bombed a Czech weapons depot linked to Ukraine in 2014, an event that led to the expulsion of roughly 100 Russian diplomats. The opposition ODS, led by Martin Kupka, has identified the structural contradiction: Babis reaffirms NATO commitment while governing alongside parties Kupka calls a "Kremlin fifth column." But the ODS itself failed to meet the NATO spending target during its 2021-2025 tenure, suggesting the political incentives against defense spending in Czech politics run deeper than any single coalition. Defense analyst Andor Sandor, a former military intelligence commander, frames the deeper problem: weak spending growth is "not optimal," but the real failure is the absence of strategic understanding about what the military should look like and what role it should play. Money without doctrine is waste; austerity without doctrine is negligence. Babis is betting that personal rapport with Donald Trump will provide cover as the spending row intensifies. That bet assumes Trump values bilateral relationships over alliance burden-sharing metrics — a plausible read of Trump's transactional style, but one that leaves Czechia exposed if Washington decides to make an example of laggards. The 2% target in 2027 may satisfy domestic politics, but it positions Czechia as the weakest link in a Central European NATO flank that Russia is actively probing.
