NATO’s Myopic Accounting Ignores Maritime Superpower Greece 

America just skipped December’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting. That’s a first in over two decades. Part of the reason is the alliance’s irrelevance to President Donald Trump’s personalized, high-stakes peace negotiation to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Another is likely the administration’s weariness over Europe’s anemic defense spending. The alliance’s current 2 percent of GDP benchmark has long been a source of transatlantic friction. It is also a dangerously simplistic metric that measures inputs, not outputs.  

The benchmark quantifies treasure, not strategic capability, and overlooks one of the most critical (and undervalued) contributions allies can make: maritime power—specifically, commercial sealift capacity. There is a solution. 

Future major conflicts won’t be won by fighter jets and armored brigades alone. Logistics will be the deciding factor. The ability to transport and sustain forces across oceans will be decisive.  

In this crucial domain, NATO faces a quiet but catastrophic deficit. A European conflict, such as defending the Baltic states from a Russian attack, would require a sealift operation on a scale not seen since World War II.  

The logistical backbone of the “Arsenal of Democracy” has atrophied. The U.S. Maritime Administration’s Ready Reserve Force (RRF), the core of America’s strategic sealift capacity, consists of a few dozen aging, steam-powered vessels, with an average age approaching 50 years. Their readiness is questionable, and the crews needed to man them are in short supply. Across Europe, the picture is similarly bleak, with national fleets having dwindled for decades. 

The Trump administration has recognized the parlous state of America’s shipbuilding and announced plans to revive the yards to rebuild the U.S. merchant marine. As my colleagues at the Hoover Institution recently concluded in The Arsenal of Democracy, “In our estimation, the U.S. military’s logistics system is the single weakest link in U.S. deterrence. The U.S. maritime logistics system is in dire condition in terms of its number of ships, its number of personnel, and its surge capacity.” Yet even on an optimistic schedule, new hulls, trained mariners, and expanded yard capacity are a generational project, not a quick fix for the next Baltic or Taiwan crisis.  

This decline contrasts sharply with China’s meteoric rise. Beijing is not just building a world-class blue-water navy; it is solidifying its dominance across the entire maritime domain. China is the world’s largest shipbuilder, accounting for nearly 50 percent of global output in 2023, while the U.S. languishes with less than 1 percent. China has the world’s second-largest commercial fleet, and its national security laws explicitly integrate this fleet into the state’s military strategy, mandating that many new ships be built to military specifications. In a crisis, Beijing can call upon a vast, state-directed logistical armada. What about NATO? 

This is where the strategic myopia of the 2 percent rule becomes most apparent. Consider Greece. The Hellenic Republic is one of the few NATO members that consistently exceeds the 2 percent spending target. In 2023, it spent around 3.76 percent of GDP, then the highest in the Alliance. Driven by regional security challenges, this commitment equips NATO with a formidable, modernizing military in the vital Eastern Mediterranean. Yet this figure fails to capture Greece’s most profound contribution to Western security. 

Greece is a maritime superpower. Greek shipowners control over 20 percent of the world’s commercial shipping tonnage and nearly 60 percent of the European Union’s fleet. This includes thousands of strategically vital vessels: crude oil tankers, LNG carriers, and bulk carriers essential for transporting fuel, grain, and heavy equipment. The Greek-flagged fleet is among the largest and most modern in the world. It is crewed by a deep pool of experienced personnel from the Hellenic Merchant Marine—a human capital asset nearly impossible to replicate. 

This is not merely a private-sector resource. Under long-standing principles of maritime law and national statutes, Athens can requisition Greek-flagged vessels into state service during wartime or national emergency. These ships are a de facto strategic reserve. In a kinetic conflict, Athens could, by law, mobilize a transport and logistics fleet dwarfing the dedicated sealift capacity of the entire NATO alliance combined. 

The potential is staggering. Imagine Europe’s reinforcement in a crisis. While the U.S. struggles to activate its handful of aging Ready Reserve Force ships, Greece could mobilize hundreds of modern vessels, providing tankers to fuel NATO’s air and ground assets, plus bulk carriers to transport munitions, supplies, and follow-on forces. This is not a theoretical capability; it is a tangible, legally accessible asset that addresses NATO’s greatest logistical vulnerability. 

Maritime capacity must be formally recognized and credited within NATO’s burden-sharing framework. NATO should devise a formula that allows maritime nations like Greece—and others such as Norway, with their significant fleets—to count a portion of the value of their requisitionable commercial tonnage toward their defense contributions. 

This is not an accounting trick or a ruse for allies to evade their responsibilities. On the contrary, it is a call for a more sophisticated, strategically relevant accounting for burdensharing. The current value of Greece’s 3.1 percent contribution would be even more significant in real terms, given its latent logistical power.  

Acknowledging this would do two things: first, it would give a more accurate picture of an ally’s actual contribution to collective defense. Second, and more importantly, it would incentivize the behavior the alliance desperately needs. By crediting the strategic value of national-flagged fleets, NATO would encourage member states to repatriate ships to their own flags, rather than “flagging out” to registries in Panama or Liberia. It would also incentivize investment in mariner training programs and the maintenance of strong legal frameworks for vessel requisition. 

Additionally, it would validate the core national security rationale for maritime cabotage rules, such as America’s Jones Act. These laws, often criticized in peacetime as mere protectionism, are designed precisely to ensure a nation retains a domestic fleet and experienced mariners for a national emergency. By formally valuing this capability, NATO would acknowledge a tangible contribution to the alliance’s collective security. 

History offers clear and costly precedents for the decisive role of commercial fleets. In World War II, Norway’s contribution was indispensable. When Germany invaded in 1940, Norway had the world’s fourth-largest merchant fleet. The Norwegian government-in-exile established the Norwegian Shipping and Trade Mission, or Nortraship, placing the fleet at the Allies’ disposal. These ships and their brave crews created a transatlantic lifeline, transporting fuel, food, and war materiel. Their contribution was so vital that Winston Churchill said they were worth more than a million soldiers. This came at a staggering cost: nearly 500 Nortraship vessels were sunk, and over 3,000 Norwegian sailors perished, but their sacrifice was instrumental to Allied victory. 

More recently, during the 1982 Falklands War, the United Kingdom’s rapid victory was enabled by the requisition of over 50 commercial vessels—“Ships Taken Up From Trade” (STUFT)—including the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2, to transport troops and supplies 8,000 miles to the South Atlantic. 

Skeptics will argue that valuing such a contribution is complex. In 2016, I argued for in-kind donations for cyber defense and an “Erasmus Brigade” to defend NATO countries’ networks and data. Is this proposal any more complex than weighing cyber defense expertise or intelligence sharing? Defense economists can readily develop a credible methodology based on deadweight tonnage, vessel type, age, and readiness. A modern LNG carrier, available on 30 days’ notice, is a quantifiable strategic asset. Its value to the alliance in a crisis is arguably far greater than an equivalent dollar amount spent on legacy equipment. 

The 2-percent target—growing to a 5-percent benchmark by 2035—was designed to ensure the Alliance has the capabilities it needs. If NATO treats the benchmark as sacrosanct, it risks ignoring the very capabilities that could determine victory or defeat.  

The nature of warfare is changing, and the geostrategic landscape is being reshaped on the high seas. NATO, a fundamentally maritime alliance, must adapt its thinking. Recognizing the immense, untapped power of the Greek merchant marine—and that of its other shipping powerhouses—is the first, most logical step.  

The strength of the alliance is not just in its budgets but in its collective resources. Hulls in the water, ready to serve the cause of freedom, are a resource we can no longer afford to leave off the ledger.