Right, trying to frame this as ‘maybe they don’t need to spend that much on the military’ ignores that they agreed that they should spend that much on the military. And if you want to talk about capabilities and not percentages, what would NATO be able to do in Syria without the US? Or even in Kosovo, which is within Europe? The fact that NATO combat operations have really been “US and UK come in with a bit of support from the others and do all of the heavy work” is a pretty big deal.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the 2% figure started in the 90s after the fall of the USSR, when leaders were trying to figure out what NATO’s purpose would be.
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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).
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Well, unlike Europe I don’t think that most of Latin America was embroiled in large scale cross-border wars before 1945…certainly not many that didn’t involve Europeans (or Americans) in the mix. So, not sure that your analogy really works. Seems to me, based on history, that NATO has helped western Europe a hell of a lot wrt strife between western European nations. So has the EU and EZ of course. But NATO, IMHO, is the foundation and what jelled everything in the post-WWII era…that and probably having a terrifying common enemy like the US…er, I mean the USSR.
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Actually, I’m pretty sure the 2% figure started in the 90s after the fall of the USSR, when leaders were trying to figure out what NATO’s purpose would be.
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Ah, didn’t know it was a post-Cold War agreement. Thanks for the correction.
I get the free rider argument and I agree. NATO countries get a competitive advantage if they can spend money on research or infrastructre or education or whatever in lieu of guns. For that NATO countries should be held to their commitments.
I will say though unless the US decreases its military budget as others put more in then there is no benefit to the US (beyond the knock-on effects I just noted). I seriously doubt the US will decrease its military budget as NATO pays more of its own bills. Further, I submit that the US likes the geopolitical pull it has by being the biggest kid on the block. I doubt the US would be thrilled if Europe shrugged and said we’re really not needed. Thanks anyway.
NATO is a defensive alliance. Its taken on missions outside of that for a few years, but whether it should and whether Europe has any need to project power outside of its area are, I think, different discussion. As is wether NATO would be a good vehicle for such power projection.
I’d say NATOS purpose is mutual defense.
You may find that the situation has changed just a little bit since the 80s. Also, the Warzaw Pact was not as powerful as we assumed back then.
This is from memory, but I am short of time. Anyone have better figures, feel free to correct me:
European NATO forces, excluding Canada and the US has 1.5 million military personnel, mostly professionals. Russia has 750 000, about half conscripts. There are very serious morale problems in Russias forces, and bullying is rife and sometimes lethal.
Russia has a large advantage in tanks and number of armored vehicles, something like 3:1 unless I misremember.
Air forces are about even in numbers.
Navally, Russia is somewhat out-tonnaged, and has its tonnage spread over more vessels.
However, that is not all: Russias force is heavily based on the Soviet legacy. A lot of it is 20+ years old and has gone through two decades of very questionable maintenance. This is not so much a problem for soldiers, who can be issued with a new weapon pretty quickly, or armored vehicles where resources are spread out over a large number of pieces.
It is, however, pretty important in the case of the air force and navy, where small malfunctions can have catastrophic consequences. Russia has been known to send tugs with their warships in case they fail. As I’ve heard it, the Russian airforce did not do well in Georgia.
Currently, Russia is engaged in warfare which allows them to apply only the best troops and show off their best equipment. Engaging an enemy that required use of all their troops and equipment would be a different issue entirely.
Also, Russia has a strategic problem: China. China has spent a lot on its military recently. They have few interests in common with Russia, in fact I think they trade more with the Netherlands than with Russia. In fact, Russia is sitting on a vast tract of land that used to be Chinese. Outer Manchuria. China is densely populated and resource-hungry. They were engaged in all but formally declared war over it in 69.
Russia has to keep credible forces on its Eastern borders. Europes defense cares nothing about China or the Bering Straights. Europe would be fighting a one-front war. Russia cannot assume they’d be afforded the same luxury.
Generally, in a no nukes fight, Russia could probably go even with the United Kingdom. Neither can easily reach the other. Might win against France and Germany, the terrain favors their tank advantage. Against all of European NATO, the EU or both, they have little chance. Unless they manage a complete surprise zerg-rush which is not compatible with todays surveillance capabilities.
Generally, follow the money. Russia is showing off its hardware to potential buyers in Syria, and the US assumes increases in European military spending will be partially spent on US equipment. And even a fraction of a percent of Europes GDP is an enormous amount of money.
The benefit to the US is that we would likely devote those resources to other security issues, rather than seek to reap a windfall. I’m sure Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and various Southeast Asian nations would like us to pay more attention to the Asia-Pacific region, for example.
I specifically said that the quesiton is more along the lines of the cost of the war, not the outcome. On 9/11, a few hundred thousand dollars of investment caused trillions in economic losses. If you’re satisfied that winning at the end of the day is sufficient, and the cost of winning isn’t a great concern to you, then perhaps the status quo is a decent policy opinion in your eyes. Personally, I don’t think it should be anywhere near a fair fight.
Cite? I’ve followed these issues for quite some time, and the only people I have ever heard mention this line of thought are those who are generally opposed to defense spending.
Here’s my big problem with that line of thinking. In that same time, it’s been overwhelmingly the US instigating those wars, and complaining how NATO should help out more.
There is a price for leadership, and we reap the benefits. Let’s not delude ourselves that pulling out of NATO wouldn’t have economic costs beyond the issues with defense spending and (another hackneyed phrase) national security.
Look, the reason the US spends so much more than Europe on the military is that the US has more alliances and more defense commitments all over the world. Even if the US were not concerned with China to start with, they are committed to the defense of Taiwan.
Europe really isn’t that concerned about the military potential of China.
And if something kicks off between, say, Indonesia and Australia, the US has, I think an alliance with Australia. And if the US will to keep its promises was in doubt, Russia might start eying Japan. Again.
The US has to maintain enough power that if something did kick off, like North Korea decided on surprise reunification, there is not only the force to deal with that at hand but enough spare force that others did not try to sneak one in while the US were tied down elsewhere.
While Europe would likely have strong opinions on any of these, they are not military threats. And no matter how obvious the need to project power seems from the perspective of a young hegemon, seen from a Europe that has been doing that for centuries, its not all its cracked up to be in the end.
What Europe needs to do is coordinate its militaries and spending. There is far more power in that than in raising the spending of twenty-odd separate militaries.
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Russia has a large advantage in tanks and number of armored vehicles, something like 3:1 unless I misremember.
Air forces are about even in numbers.
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All of this is only if you include the entire US arsenal. If you are excluding the US (and the smaller contribution from Canada) then Russian numbers in tanks and APCs as well as fighter planes pretty much dwarfs all of Europe combined. It’s only when you toss in the US that things balance out and NATO pulls ahead.
True if you are putting the US in, but pretty even if not. This is less easy to get cites for since Russian naval strength is hard to judge these days, and a lot of ships on the books are actually rusting hulks. But NATO has drawn down a lot on their navies as well, relying mainly on the US for blue water operations.
Absolutely true. Like China, a lot of Russian military strength comes from older designs…much in both arsenals are actually from units built during the Soviet era, some built since but based on those older designs. And it’s hard to judge how good (or bad) the maintenance has been.
On the other side, however, countries like Germany who should be among the strongest have allowed their budgets to go down so much that they have very few operational fighters, their naval units have shrunk, and their air craft (fixed and non-fixed wing) have also drawn down to very low levels. Basically, you have to look at more than the base number of troops to really see what’s happened in much of Europe wrt their military units. They have equipments and troops but they don’t have a lot of it operational or the budgets to train on it as extensively as they need…and they have very little logistics capability to project beyond their own individual borders (in some cases even that is problematic). The US has prepositioned a bunch of our own stuff in various European countries, but the Europeans themselves have drawn down their capabilities a lot since the end of the cold war.
Why do you think that China and Russia would come into conflict? Recently Russia agreed to make no issue of China redeploying some of it’s strategic missile regiments to the border. That doesn’t sound, to me at least, as if Russia is worried about China or Chinese intent.
Thing is, all of this assumes Russia goes all out to defeat and destroy NATO or invade Germany. What happens in a more realistic scenario, where the US is disengaged for some reason, and Russia decides to invade and re-annex, say, the Baltic states? Or some other peripheral nation? Sure, they are part of NATO, but realistically how does NATO, without the US do anything about it? Most NATO countries couldn’t project the sort of force to the Baltic states that Russia can. Do you then go nuclear?
All of this is getting away from the point of the thread, though it’s interesting.
It is a valid point. However, the cumulative cost of keeping overwhelming force is also an issue, especially between nuclear-capable blocs.
NATO countries buy US equipment all the time.And often for rather large sums of money.If NATO members increased their spending by 0,5 % of GDP and half went on orders from the US, that would be a massive surge in military industry.
Which wars have the US embroiled NATO in that NATO didn’t want to be in?? What wars are you thinking of? AFAIK, Libya was the last war that NATO was involved in…and I don’t think the US really wanted to be involved all that much. Iraq wasn’t a NATO thing. Bosnia and Croatia weren’t US instigated. I suppose you could say Afghanistan, but really I don’t think NATO (the countries or their leaders, as opposed to their citizens) were exactly dragged in kicking and screaming by the US. It turned out to be a cluster fuck, no doubt, but it was still necessary to do IMHO…we just should have done a better job. What were you thinking of?
What about projecting power IN its area, thought? My remembering of the Kosovo war was that it was essentially the US doing the fighting, then non-US NATO sending in the occupation forces, and a quick bit of googling confirms that. How much power could NATO effectively project against Russian ventures in eastern Europe? I’m pretty sure that, other than the NATO members bordering the area, the answer is ‘not much’. If the US is disengaged and Russia decides to start throwing its weight around militarily, NATO can’t stop it. Completely setting aside Europe possibly wanting to project power outside of its area, I think NATO has significant problems projecting power within its own area without the US.
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NATO countries buy US equipment all the time. And often for rather large sums of money. If NATO members increased their spending by 0,5 % of GDP and half went on orders from the US, that would be a massive surge in military industry.
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Massive surge? It would be a few billion dollars. Europe aren’t our biggest customers, to be honest and a few billion wouldn’t massively surge our MIC (and, frankly, the US makes more on agricultural products than military gear anyway)…though billions are still billions and it would be jobs, no doubt. By the same token European arms industries would get a boost, of course…a much larger one than the US industries. Germany and France, for instance, are already huge arms exporters and have military industrial complexes that are very advanced. The trouble is, Germany doesn’t spend the money on its own defense.
This disagrees a lot with my figures. Looking at Global Firepower… in tanks, Russia is ahead, but Turkey, Poland, Greece and France together has 50 % of their numbers. In total aircraft, it takes four European nations to surpass the Russian numbers. France, Turkey, the UK and Italy. Everyone else is just piling on. Same for fighter jets. France, Germany, Italy and Turkey together outnumbers Russia. The rest of Europen NATO is just gravy. Naval power… well its worse.
So as far as I can see, no without including the US or Canadian figures, just European NATO, Russia is behind on everything but armored vehicles and they are not as far ahead on tanks as I though. There is simply a limit to how far above their weight class Russia can go.
Your point on Germany is entirely true.
Or they are too worried to make waves. It is how they deal when they are in a position of strength. Russia and China have few interests in common, and Chinas is nearly ten times Russias population and economy. Their trade is minimal. China is densely bordered and ravenous for resources. Russia is sitting on vast territories which are resource-rich, sparsely populated and some of which used to be Chinese. Which they fought over quite recently.
With both of them being nuclear powers, I don’t expect China will try for a land grab anytime soon. But if Russia were to commit itself totally in Europe I could see an offer Russia can’t refuse being made.
If the US disengaged there would be a window before things had settled down. I doubt either the EU nor NATO would accept members being carved off though. Russia has to live with a vastl more powerful Europe on its western borders.
All of this is getting away from the point of the thread, though it’s interesting.
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I suspect that was more to do with unwillingness than lack of ability. Europe infrastructure is almost absurdly dense. I really can’t see how that would be a problem. Unless you assume a total surprise and a bombing campaign to take out -well, everything really. Roads, rails, airports… Europe has a lot.
Very roughly, 0.5 % of the EUs GDP is 10 % of the US military budget. If spending goes up by that much, not just as a one-time set of purchases but as yearly spending… it would be very very nice for military contractors everywhere. Not least in the US, who has the most and as the preeminent NATO member has a big foot in the door.
… right, with a bunch of smaller nations upping their contribution in order to make the organisation significantly more powerful, who still leads NATO?
So you significantly boost the US military-industrial complex and you make the US stronger as leader of an even more powerful alliance.
All the while Trump is telling the world Putin is a great guy and why can’t we all just get along.
And somehow this mostly works for the domestic US audience,
This isn’t really all that new a theme for a NATO. Clucking of tongues at each other over not meeting the mutually agreed upon spending goals and a feel good agreement to go back home and do something as the resolution is common in the post Cold War era. Frequently the UK and France (until dropping below the goal in the post-housing crisis austerity moves muted their voice) have carried a big chunk of the role of broaching the subject.
Operations in Libya really highlighted just how weak the rest of the alliance has become. It was a European desired operation (With the UK and France being major drivers) with initially 8 NATO members along with Qatar and the UAE involved. Needing the US to crack the air defense network without taking a lot of casualties wasn’t really surprising wasn’t that big a deal since it’s one of the things we excel at. The problems really started to show once we stepped back into a support role, mostly providing refueling and intelligence. It wasn’t a high intensity air campaign. Those original 8 countries still quickly started running into issues with spare parts and munitions. Their spending just didn’t include enough for consumable war stocks to handle even that mission. The alliance muddled through by going hat in hand to other NATO members to supply forces. For those that used US or German compatible systems they were also able to buy items in war stocks. (Germany, despite being one of the way off spending targets, didn’t participate so their war stocks were otherwise untouched.) NATO, without outside help, had it’s air capability stretched close to the maximum by a prostrate Libya. They knew it and acknowledged it at the time even if they wrapped it in more acceptable terms like “spedning smarter.”
Comparing force structure and numbers of platofrms to Russia doesn’t matter that much when it’s clear that most members are not spending enough to sustain them in the fight. A lot of Europe is a hollow force at current spending levels. The UK, who still meets spending goals, has actually adapted after Libya by cutting force structure to enable shifting money to other needs. There’s a real need to spend more to actually be able to face a large and relatively modern foe. Alliance members know it. The eastern most members especially are concerned about it. Most of the other members know it and generally have expressed agreement previously. The agreement to spend that much was, after all, a unanimous agreement. It’s just hard to sell spending more in their domestic politics.
The US ratcheted things up a little. It’s not a new theme. It’s been apublicly ignored theme for a long time though. It’s got more attention this time between Trump’s comments and the resurgent Russian threat. It’s not the Trump, blunt hammer of pulling out. It’s a more subtle poke that gives them a bad guy to shift the blame to when making the changes most of Mattis’ counterparts already want.
“Hey I’d love to sell you the latest model NATO Article Five with turbocharger and leather seats for that price but my sales manager is a kind of a dick. If you raise your offer to…”
What wars are you thinking of? AFAIK, Libya was the last war that NATO was involved in…and I don’t think the US really wanted to be involved all that much. Iraq wasn’t a NATO thing. Bosnia and Croatia weren’t US instigated. I suppose you could say Afghanistan, but really I don’t think NATO (the countries or their leaders, as opposed to their citizens) were exactly dragged in kicking and screaming by the US. It turned out to be a cluster fuck, no doubt, but it was still necessary to do IMHO…we just should have done a better job. What were you thinking of?