I disagree. The only real advantage to the US of requiring NATO states to spend more is that it saves the US money. This benefit must be weighed against the downside of a more-armed Europe, an area that has a long history of warfare.
If Trump is going to vastly expand the military (and thus wiping out any savings his NATO plan might bring) then all we’re really doing is re-arming Europe and potentially hurting their economy.
US military spending. (Or redirects it elsewhere.)
The problem is that NATO members gave their word to do their fair share for the common defense of Europe, and the vast majority of NATO countries haven’t honored their word.
So was Europe lying when it made the 2% commitment? The US is in the midst of adding several billion dollars to its defense budget just to send more US troops to Europe, and it sure looks like we’re being taken for suckers.
It is not “Trumpmania” to point out that Trump said he wants to nearly double US military spending. In that case the US is not saving any money.
I wrote “Trumpiana”, not Trumpmania. (Scholarly people like to add -iana suffixes - or something like that - when converting words to fields of study. Not that I’m a scholarly person or anything, but still …)
As to the topic, they are still two different things. Whatever money Trump saves in Europe can still be redirected elsewhere. More importantly, I could disagree with Trump doubling defense spending but still agree that the US should cut back on NATO.
Well, of course Trump can SAY he wants to double the defense budget (though if we are talking about a trillion dollars it wouldn’t be a doubling), but he really has no say in that when it comes down to it. That’s Congresses call.
As for the wider point, I kind of agree with you somewhat and also with what I think Whack-a-Mole was getting at. Seems impossible, but here’s my take. Whack-a-Mole is making the point that just because the NATO countries meet their commitments that won’t necessarily save the US wrt the annual budget. I agree with that. I think you have it right in that, while it won’t save on the recurring costs it might save on a large, um, capital expenditure in the future. What I mean by that is that the various wars and fighting that NATO and the US has been involved in together in the last decade or so the US has carried most of the water. We are the only member who has the logistics and ability to project any more than a token force outside of Europe. If the NATO memebers were spending what they should then their capabilities would, in theory at least, come up to the point where the US wouldn’t have to basically do just about everything. Assuming NATO has any more external adventures such as Libya, it would help the US if the rest of NATO could carry more of the weight and not have to rely so heavily on the US to do everything.
[QUOTE=Ravenman]
The problem is that NATO members gave their word to do their fair share for the common defense of Europe, and the vast majority of NATO countries haven’t honored their word.
So was Europe lying when it made the 2% commitment? The US is in the midst of adding several billion dollars to its defense budget just to send more US troops to Europe, and it sure looks like we’re being taken for suckers.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. And taking it a step further since NATO has involved itself in things outside of Europe, it will give them the ability to actually be effective both inside of Europe for their common defense and also protect their common strategic needs beyond their borders…again, hopefully, not having to rely so much on the US to do everything. Obviously, even at the full 2% for everyone the US is still going to be the largest military, but it would help us to not have to carry most of the weight all the time. To put it in perspective, NATO’s budget according to the article I linked to earlier was $900 billion in 2016…the US military was $650 billion of that. Certainly $250 billion in combined spending is a lot, but if countries like Germany and France, especially, bumped their spending back to 2% of GDP it’s going to be a big help to the entire alliance.
The flip side of that is true and got much truer with Trump in control, though - American domestic politics are far more important to American politicians than NATO concerns. This isn’t just something that Trump came up with and is running with out of the blue; the idea that the US is shouldering the costs for European defense while European countries whine about the US military until they demand it does the dirty work for them has been brewing ever since the end of the cold war. A remember a lot of people perceived Yugoslavia in the 90s as ‘Europe keeps whining about anything military Clinton or Bush does, but then when there’s a problem in their own backyard they can’t handle it themselves and demand that Uncle Sugar comes in to fix it’. If you look at a chart of spending, the only ones making the target 2% are the UK (who really are in a distinct category for US relations) and countries that border Russia, plus Greece as the one exception - most of traditional NATO is well below.
Europe seems to been relying on having calm, deliberate US leadership and taken the attitude of ‘well, America will complain but won’t put up to much of a fuss, what are they going to, pull out of NATO’? And this worked for presidents like Clinton, Bush, and Obama - none of them wanted to kick over the apple cart, and their supporters wouldn’t really like a lot of tension with Europe. This let Europe slack on their defense spending, knowing that ‘World Police USA’ wasn’t really going to hang them out to dry. But now they are facing a wild, shoot-from-the-hip leader in the US who’s supporters actually enjoy him playing hardball with a ‘batch of pansies who have been sneering at us for years,’ and they’re in a really tough spot.
I would much rather have a calm president pressing any NATO restructuring issues instead of the bull in the china shop that we have now, but this really is an issue that Europe has failed to address for decades.
There is a lot of talk about fairness here. And not enough about a point I think is fairly central: How much spending is actually needed? The US is certainly spending a lot of money, but the US made that decision without consulting Europe on how much defense was needed.
Russia is not the Soviet Union.
Russia has, from memory about 750 000 military personnel. About half conscripts. European NATO, not counting the US or Canada has about 1,5 million, mostly professionals.
Russias economy, before the oil price crashed, was almost exactly the size of Italys, and today, Russia could probably be outspent by Scandinavia alone, if the motivation was there. Population, tech, industry is pretty brutally in Europes favor as well. And this is a best-case setup for Russia, who is trying to the breaking point while Europe is just not bothering much.
How much spending is actually needed for puropse?
Depends on what the purpose is. Certainly Russia today spends less than it used to. They are below $100 billion (around $60-70 billion that we know of, IIRC) for defense now. However, they have a very large earlier investment, giving them access to all that old Soviet era stuff. They are also aggressively pushing R&D for new systems. Russia, of course, isn’t the only threat, either. China’s defense spending is getting up to where it’s about what the rest of NATO spends (that $250 billion of combined spending of everyone who is not the US)…if you count their internal military budget along with their external budget (about $130 billion and $120 billion, IIRC). And they are increasing that. Then you have the other threats, such as ISIS, North Korea, Iran, Syria and <insert future crisis we haven’t thought of here>. That’s the thing…it’s hard to say what they will need. You need to look at capabilities, not necessarily what you spend verse what the enemies you think are spending. And Europe isn’t spending money on things such as the ability to project force beyond Europe, even though they obviously think they have requirements to do so (and based on their strategic needs, they do).
The 2% target was not something the US came up with on it’s own, it was agreed to by NATO member nations. That’s part of why this has been building, there was a discussion of ‘this would be reasonable’, and now some countries are only doing half of reasonable.
Everyone talks money and forgets that if war breaks out in Europe, it’s largely Europeans who will be paying the price of blood.
The US is that generous Grandpa that loves buying things for the kids but occasionally gets gruff when he realizes how much he spends on the ungrateful bastards.
As a former member of NATO forces in Berlin '85–'87, yeah, NATO is not holding up their end of the bargain and should be more invested in their defense.
Hopefully with the Orange one in power for however long, they will come to realize that it is time to step up and take more responsibility for their own defense.
One would think that this would be sufficient incentive for European states to invest in sufficient military capabilities to be a strong deterrent to Russia, so we can have greater confidence that war will not break out.
I don’t really think that 2% of GDP creates a “strong deterrent,” I think it is more like “this is the least we can do.” And as others have pointed out, we’re not talking about THAT much money here. Sure, it isn’t peanuts, but if NATO members as a whole increased defense spending by 0.6% of their GDP, the strong majority of NATO would be meeting the goal.
Grim Render, you raise a good point about how much we need to do to defeat Russia. Again, our first question should be, are military forces sufficient to deter Russia? If Russia were to go on the offense, I think it would look like what happened in Ukraine: they try to say, “Hey, it isn’t us carrying out an invasion of a country!” And then who knows what happens from there.
But let’s say this escalates into full shooting war: Russia is a heck of a lot closer to Europe than the US is. It would take months – literally months – to move a lot of American troops across the ocean. So how much blood would NATO spill before waiting for the cavalry to arrive? If the European NATO members had better militaries, the outcome for the good guys would surely be a lot better. And I think in either case, the good guys would still win, but the question is about how bad a war it would be.
And I remind you that, as evidenced by Syria, Russia has no problem at all in bombing hospitals, schools, and whatnot, violating the laws of war, and then just totally denying that it ever happened. A war on the European continent would be really, really ugly.
Wars do not go from zero to full court press in a day. If Russia started mobilizing enormous forces it’d be spotted and the US could start work to respond.
Granted, Russia would still get the jump start but it’s not like the entire Russian military will be pulling up to Warsaw before anyone knows what is going on.
Also, NATO has military plans for such possibilities. Defense is easier than attack and NATO would trade land for time till US forces did arrive. Yeah, it would be costly but that was and I think still is their doctrine if facing a massive Russian invasion.
It would cost Europe a hell of a lot less if they were spending the money they need to make it so impossible for Russia to even think of this as an option. Right now, it’s conceivable, though obviously would be very painful…and really, the main reason it’s probably not on Russia’s table is because the US is the 800 lb gorrilla. Europe should be at the point where, if something happens to the US they could deter anything like this from even being contemplated on their own.
That includes some country with plans to pick apart other nation-states (like, oh, say the Ukraine) and annex them to their empire…er, federation. I think a strong NATO at its peak and obviously firing on all cylinders would be able to deter stuff like this by its commitments. A NATO that is basically the US (who, let’s be frank, isn’t always the most committed to things like the stability of countries like the Ukraine, who most Americans didn’t even know was a country until Russia’s antics, and probably who mostly don’t care) and a couple other countries spending at the agreed upon 2% with a bunch more well below that, isn’t going to deter stuff like that very well…which is why Russia is doing what it’s doing. And you could broaden that to regional issues beyond Europe as well.
This is just a guns or butter debate and we can go round-and-round on it endlessly playing “what-if” scenarios. Having a big military comes at other costs.
It’s as much a debate about the free rider problem as it is a question of guns or butter.
And by the way, if a particular country sees it as a guns or butter issue, then don’t make the commitment to spend 2% of your economy on defense if you don’t think it is a good idea.
They and we agreed upon what the minimum cost would be, however. And while we are meeting and exceeding that cost, many of them aren’t. Seems pretty simple to me…you have a few that are and the rest are getting to ride on those few. ETA: or what Ravenman said.
And we wouldn’t be talking about that much larger of a military NATO…we are talking about maybe a few 10’s of billion more (mainly from Germany…about $18 billion if I’m reading their current GDP correctly). I seriously doubt that if Germany brought it’s spending up to where it agreed it should be when it joined NATO that it would be a choice between guns or butter. Really, outside of perhaps the PIIGS nations it wouldn’t be a choice of either or…they could afford it. They just haven’t chosen too.
Eh. I don’t really see that the lack of wars in western Europe had anything to do with NATO. Cross-border warfare is fairly rare everywhere in the post-1945 world, whether there are regional alliances or not. (Most wars since 1945 have been civil wars). I don’t think there is good evidence that the presence of NATO (or for that matter the Warsaw Pact).
Latin America doesn’t have an equivalent of NATO or the Warsaw Pact, but there have been only two cross-border wars since 1945, and both of those barely qualified as wars. (There have been a few other conflicts that came close to war but stopped short).