Defense Minister Vlado Misajlovski took part in meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, where the topics were defense modernization, investment priorities and the situation in Ukraine. The message he conveyed was in the spirit of the alliance: every member has to invest more and more in defense modernization.

"United in NATO, we can withstand any challenge," was one of the talking points. A standard sentence for meetings like this - but behind it stands a very concrete pressure spreading across the whole alliance: for members to raise their defense budgets, and significantly above current levels.

For a country with a budget like ours, "investment in modernization" isn't an abstract phrase - it's money coming from the same treasury that funds salaries, pensions and healthcare. Every increase in the defense budget is a political decision about what it will be taken from.

No one disputes that security matters, especially at a time when the war in Ukraine shows no sign of letting up. But the question rarely asked out loud at meetings like this is whose security, and at whose expense. When a message of "spend more" comes from Brussels, it's worth asking whether what's being bought is really our defense - or a place in someone else's plan, for which we pay the bill while the decisions are made elsewhere.