> Just a handful of countries are spending 5% of their GDP on defense

Have you even read the comment in full before responding? I'm talking about this part of it:

> Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed

But since you wouldn't get it anyways:

The "5% of GDP" is a number that US politicians came up with, seemingly out of nowhere, because they figured they want to boost their military industry.

EU countries are already spending that or even more - just look at Ukraine spending by EU countries - but since it's spent on their own domestic defense industry, US politicians don't like it. That's the point.

They don't want us spending 5% of the GDP on defense unless we buy their stuff. So here we are.