Non-mandatory in the sense that there’s no enforcement mechanism, yes. It had been talked about as a target for quite a while, after a history of post Cold War cuts by most in Europe that raised concerns about spending too little. The 2014 agreement that all members supported had a goal of correcting it within a decade, by 2024. It was first agreed to as a minimum goal in 2006 though and magically the issues remain. The 2014 agreement included some other things for those not currently at that level:
If you take a look at “Graph 3” in this pdffrom NATO you can see that some are still going backwards. Big chunks of the alliance are either basically staying stable or are clearly not making changes that will hit the target two years into that decade.
If European NATO countries bought 20% more F-35s than they currently plan to, that would probably total about 100 aircraft, which is about a 3% increase in the number of F-35s that Lockheed plans to build. Sorry, that isn’t “massive.”
Besides which, as a general rule of thumb, equipping costs on a modern military is maybe like a third of defense spending. The bulk of any increased spending is primarily manpower and operations.
And to deliver this message now, with Russia being aggressive in Ukraine, and testing cruise missiles that may well be in violation of arms-control treaties…not good, not good at all.
And so much for the hopes that Mattis could talk some sanity into Trump, or would at least have the integrity to resign if asked to deliver a message like this.
I’m ready for President Pence, and the sooner the better.
It’s pretty staggering for a senior partner in an alliance to openly coerce the junior partners isn’t it? Either you write some spending commitments into the alliance (perhaps as a secret protocol)*, or you make your demands behind closed doors. Publicly demanding increased risks has so many downsides, and makes it clear you believe your alliance partners are vassals rather than independent states.
*NATO does have a “guideline” that each nation should spend 2% of GDP on defence with 20% of that to spent on Equipment - NATO helpfully provides tables and graphs of each nation’s expenditure in this pdf!
Given the year-long pause before they have to do this - i.e., a reasonable time frame - I don’t see any problem. The other countries should be paying the money that they had agreed to, and certainly (at this particular moment in time) it makes sense for European states to start boning up their military capabilities. Mattis probably approves of the message.
Minus the Russia Connection and any US President complaining about NATO spending would probably be ignored so, bizarrely, this sort of works out.
Forgive my ignorance, but what, in principle, is wrong with this request? NATO countries are, to the best of my understanding, strongly encouraged to spend no less than 2% of GDP on defence. The chart lisiate linked to indicates that very few countries - countries that could easily afford it - are meeting that target. Meanwhile the US is spending far more than required, presumably to make up the shortfall. Trump stated throughout the campaign that he felt this was unfair and that he would seek to change it. I agree that doing it publicly is a terrible strategy. However, I can’t see that it’s a particularly unreasonable request, nor is it out of line with Trump’s pre-election stance.
Is this actually a terrible new OMG Trump thing? Hectoring the rest of NATO for not spending enough is a time-honored bipartisan tradition. It certainly doesn’t sound that different from what Robert Gates said in 2011:
But you can’t ignore the Russian connection. It is a lens through which some of Trump’s more bizarre bluster makes sense. He seems ignorant of the fact that the first time the NATO allies mobilized their militaries in defense of a member was on 9/11. While asking NATO allies to pay their share is not necessarily unreasonable, doing so in an aggressive manner that might trigger the opposition is unreasonable, unless your goal is to undermine the alliance.
Or maybe we finally have s leader with balls. Obama did nothing to counter Russian aggression in a way the Russians would respect. The Euros and the Canadians haven’t been paying their fair share.
You are getting things mixed up. If European NATO increased their military budgets up to 2 % of GDP, that would be a massive amount of money. They are not going to spend all of the on F-35s, sorry.
The F-35s are an example of the US selling expensive military hardware to allies for large sums of money. While only a part of the military budget increase would end up as purchases of US hardware, we are still taking sums large enough that a fraction of them would be a very nice boost indeed.
That’s a flawed presumption. Congress isn’t going “Hey, NATO is short a lot of billions. We better increase military spending.” it’s going “We want a bigger military. Let’s spend more money.”
They may also be going “Our military is doing most of the work in NATO, we wish the rest would build up theirs.”, but I doubt the US military would shrink significantly even if the rest of NATO upped their game.
Why classify it as a tantrum rather than a reasonable request? As has been established, the USA pays a disproportionate amount to fund NATO while other first world economies pay significantly less, even though meeting the 2% target is well within their means. Furthermore, given that Trump campaigned on this, leaders of affected NATO countries should already have been factoring in this possibility into their budget calculations for at least a year already.
Because it was unceremoniously dumped on our laps, without warning or previous discussion on the matter and going straight to the nuclear diplomatic option ?
Given that the deadline will almost assuredly not be met, at least not by every member state, this is essentially what Bush the Lesser was doing with Saddam - “Let inspectors in !” “OK” “By monday !” “OK !” “And there has to be sponge cake !” “What’s sponge cake ?” “TOO LATE ASSHOLE, WAR IT IS !”. Trump has essentially decided to scrap NATO, the rest is window dressing.
Come, now. Nobody takes electioneering promises seriously in general, much less so when it comes to bloody Trump.
Please recall your post that I was responding to: you said the increased spending would constitute a “massive surge for the military industry.” I am showing you a specific example of why you are wrong: a significant arms buy for a European country is of quite modest benefit to US defense companies because Europe would still be a small market of their market.
Although I don’t know the European defense companies as well, if highly suspect that increased defense spending would be a much bigger benefit to them. Lockheed selling 50 more jets is a good day at the office for them; Saab selling 50 more jets is a huge deal.