Analysis: The 2 percent GDP spend on the military that New Zealand is being urged to match has had its share of detractors recently.

RAND, the corporation that defined the term "think tank", went so far as to give the US government a whole new way of measuring if countries were pulling their military weight - the "burden-sharing index".

"The world will not suddenly become a safer place if every ally hits that magic number," it said in January, as it promoted the index.

Weeks later, at the February Munich security conference, the Trump administration staged its turnabout on Europe and laid down the GDP spending law: 2 percent was now no longer enough, and at least 3 and even 5 percent was the goal, Donald Trump declared.

But RAND pointed out: "Asking them, 'How much do you spend?' is a poor substitute for asking, 'How much are you doing?'"

Other analysts have been here before. In 2020, the Atlantic Council, another leading US think tank, ran an article headlined: Rethink and replace 2 percent.'

"Trump uses the fact that most member states have not yet met the 2 percent target as proof that the United States is being taken advantage of by its allies," it said towards the end of his first term.

"Beyond the political challenges, the metric remains an arbitrary and inefficient tool for defence planning. It does little to indicate ... effectiveness."

After NATO set the 2 percent target in 2014, it became the proxy "indicator of the political resolve of individual allies".

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The closest New Zealand's resolve got in the ensuing decade was 1.34 percent of GDP in 2020. It was particularly low before 2016.

The spend had to rise, said Dr Juhn Espia - a research fellow at Christchurch's Institute for Indo-Pacific Affairs - but 2 percent was beyond reach for now.

"I don't think that this [is] realistic in the short-term," he told RNZ on Friday. "Prime Minister [Christopher] Luxon was wise in the choice of words here - 'as close to 2 percent as we possibly can' - because he realises how small the pie is."

How the pie will be sliced will become clearer when the defence capability plan is released. But 2 percent poorly spent would not help much.

"Imagine two countries," RAND said. "One spends 2.1 percent of its GDP on defence, mostly to maintain aging equipment and pay pensions to military retirees.

The 2 percent was labelled "arbitrary" by Canada's Ploughshares peace research institute. It was not "was not evidence-based policymaking", it said in December.

"The other spends just 1.9 percent, but it has a well-trained army, modern equipment, and a top-of-the-line military drone industry. The first country satisfies the 2 percenters, but no commander in the world would prefer it as an ally over the second country."

Greece has beaten the 2 percent all decade, peaking at over 4 percent of GDP spent on defence in 2022. But its spending on personnel was so inefficient that Greece scored near the bottom for efficiency, in a 135-page report for the European Parliament just last November about improving the quality of the defence spending, which ballooned on the continent by almost 12 percent last year.

Greece was around 0.2 on several efficiency measures, versus France on 1.0.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said when it came to quality, the 2 percent fixation was not helping.

"It masks actual capabilities, contributions, sustainability and effectiveness of spending while also incentivising states to adopt broader definitions of defence spending."

The Atlantic Council said examples "abound of allies that spend relatively little but spend it efficiently and for necessary purposes".

It mattered, too, where a country shopped for weapons. Russia supplied itself in large part, said IISS, so while its military spend last year was less than a third of Europe in actual dollars, it got fractionally more bang for its buck because Europe increasingly relied on higher-priced US imports.

The 2 percent was labelled "arbitrary" by Canada's Ploughshares peace research institute. It was not "was not evidence-based policymaking", it said in December.

Canada has been in the gun for spending almost as little as New Zealand - 1.3 percent of GDP in 2023. But the institute said Canada's non-military contribution to collective security through diplomacy, development and disaster aid, and peacekeeping should count for something.

"The contrasts are astounding - New Zealand currently has one of the smallest navies in the world, consisting of nine vessels - frigates, patrol vessels, and logistical support vessels. Singapore, on the other hand, with one of the smallest EEZs and shortest coastlines in the world, has 40 warships."

RAND came up with something similar in its burden-sharing index, in a 2017 report for the Office of the US Secretary of Defence. It updated the index figures in 2023.

The index counts the cost to a nation of peacekeeping and enforcing economic sanctions, along with total defence spending. Any score above 1.0 meant a country was pulling its weight: The US on 1.07 trailed NATO as a whole, on 1.10.

About 20 countries scored below 1.0, but RAND did not name them.

The index showed the US taking less of the burden for NATO and other partners, down from 53 percent in 1990 to 39 percent in 2023.

"That's not a small number - but it's also not a flashing red sign that we're being taken to the cleaners," RAND researcher King Mallory said in January.

Asian countries, including Oceania, were calculated as taking 13 percent of the burden. Singapore helped with that - it was a small state that New Zealand should look to, said Espia, who is based in the Philippines.

"The contrasts are astounding - New Zealand currently has one of the smallest navies in the world, consisting of nine vessels - frigates, patrol vessels, and logistical support vessels. Singapore, on the other hand, with one of the smallest EEZs and shortest coastlines in the world, has 40 warships."

Manning the navy was becoming a problem, so conventional weaponry was now being mixed with emerging tech.

"In its latest set of 10 new surface warships and two new submarines, Singapore has opted to equip these platforms with uncrewed and automated systems," Espia said.

An 8000-tonne ship could be crewed by 80 sailors. New Zealand's Te Kaha is half that tonnage and has over twice the crew.

This came at a price: Singapore spends about four times more in dollar terms than New Zealand on defence.

How much New Zealand chose to spend, and on what, depended on it "fully opting into the Western alliance (including AUKUS) or retaining a more middle-ground participation that will allow the country to cooperate on an issue-based, contingent basis", Espia said.

But 2 percent, whatever its detractors have said, will still be the measure. In February, round figures - and not indexes - were all Trump was talking about.