Totally agree, but no head of state wants to be seen as “I’m doing it because Trump told me to.” There is an ad hominem effect and Trump’s unpopularity and dislikability is enough to poison the well on many things that he advocates; people might oppose something just because Trump.
Maybe Trump could demand that NATO partners reduce their defense spending and they’d hike it 
Yeah, there’s something fundamentally wrong when the Germans, French and Italians spend between 1.2 and 1.5% of their GDP on defense. Outside of the US, they’re the other heavyweights in NATO, and between them have the lion’s share of the economic might and population.
In other words, what Belgium does isn’t really material, considering how tiny they are. You could roll up the Baltics, the Netherlands, Poland and Belgium together, and still probably not quite equal the economic might or population of any one of France, Italy or Germany.
I personally am not sure if it’s a feeling of security because they’re close to big, mean Uncle Sam, or if it’s more of a feeling that there’s not an imminent threat of any kind, or possibly some of both.
Well, it’s not like decades of asking ‘pretty please, OK now with sugar on top, come on please’ got results. As much as I dislike Trump, Obama’s softball approach resulted in a big drop in NATO military spending percentages, and I don’t see how Trump’s words magically made it ‘impossible’ for them to do something they’ve spent decades refusing to do. The more I read responses on this, the more Europe sounds like the roommate who isn’t paying his rent and keeps coming up with excuses - “Oh, it’s a bad time to demand the rent now when we might need it even more, you’re so mean” “Oh, you were rude to me, I can’t start paying it now even though being nice to me didn’t work either”.
Western Europe and supporters of their position really seems to want to have their cake and eat it too - “NATO is vitally important to world security, and the US threatening to pull back support is just insane and dangerous” but at the same time “We aren’t going to fund our part of NATO even though we said it the amount was reasonable, the US should just spend the money for us”. If NATO is really so important, why aren’t the countries that benefit from it the most willing to pay in what they said they would?
I’m curious whether there’s a direct relationship between how much a NATO country spends %GDP-wise on defense, and how close that country is, in proximity, to Russia.
Poland would no doubt beef up well; Portugal probably feels almost no threat.
How has Russia’s hand been strengthened, then, by NATO countries spending less on defense? Would Russia NOT have monkeyed with Ukraine if Denmark or Spain had more tanks? I am inclined to believe that would not have deterred them in the slightest.
I again have to point out that at current spending levels Russia cannot win a war with NATO. They could certainly make us both lose, by initiating a nuclear war, but that’s not a function of conventional military spending.
Look, I’m not saying NATO shouldn’t spend more. What I do know, though, is this:
The “Two percent” target is wholly arbitrary, doesn’t make a great deal of sense if you look at the specifics, and in some NATO countries is absolutely, unquestionably politically and/or fiscally impossible.
Irrespective of current spending levels Russia cannot effectively mount any sort of attack on NATO they could not mount even if NATO spent more. The primary operational weakness if NATO is clearly the Baltic states, which are small enough, and hard enough to defend, that Russia could roll them over and there isn’t much NATO could do to stop it initially, unless there is a massive rearrangement of NATO troop deployments to place a pretty large standing force in the Baltic states, which would itself be a provocative thing to do.
Absolutely the most dangerous thing you could possible imagine doing is not spending a little less on defense. IT’s questioning whether the alliance is going to stick together.
As an aside, I must also make the moral point, so often forgotten, that NATO has only once ever come to the defense of a member state… and that was when it joined together to defend the United States against al-Qaida and the Taliban. You will forgive me as a Canadian for remembering pretty clearly that the one time Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty was invoked it was us coming to your defense, and giving up 120 of our sons and daughters as well as billions of dollars in expenditures to do so. The U.S. saying “meh, you haven’t spent enough so screw NATO” strikes me as being a little crass, in that light.
One advantage that Trump does have going for him is that some of his threats will be taken more seriously than by other POTUSes, because Trump might actually do it. Other presidents might consider, for instance, withdrawing from NATO or the UN to be unthinkable, but with Trump all bets are off.
I’m not sure it would map out so cleanly, but there’s no question that the Baltics and Poland have significantly increased defense spending in the last two years.
Both really. Look at threads of this kind in the past. Many Europeans don’t feel like they are threatened…or, feel like if one of the ‘peripheral’ nations like those in the Baltics, they will just, with sadness, cut them loose (I’ve seen posters express this opinion on this board, and at a guess there is at least a segment of Europeans who agree…why risk their necks for those members??). In addition, they pretty much know the US is going to carry the water. We always have, after all…we haven’t really raised that much of a stink, certainly not to the point where we were prepared to leave the alliance or force out or put in some sort of punitive measures for those who aren’t meeting their target goals. Why would that change?
It’s become a real sore point, though. I don’t know how the other NATO members who are bothering to meet their goals feel, to be honest. Maybe they are good with it (some of my friends in the UK seem to feel it’s a non-issue, but no idea if they are representative of the wider population or the government). In the US folks generally don’t really think about it that much…but when they do they feel a bit of resentment that our allies aren’t carrying their own weight in Europe. Germany especially rankles, to me…they HAVE the money and could easily do this, and if they did it would be a major contribution. That they aren’t is a major drag.
Problem is that this seems to be a unique position that no one else shares and is not part of the equation.
If NATO doesn’t need all that spending, which is what you seem to be saying, then the US shouldn’t be spending it either. Let the US cut spending and let other NATO countries spend whatever they think is right. But it doesn’t seem like any agrees with you, and they think that NATO does need the spending level that it has, but only that the US should spend a big share of it. That has nothing to do with your position.
Welcome to the return of the Madman Theory.
This.
European countries need to be spending more on their own defense. Period. But poking them in the eye isn’t going to encourage them to do more, it’s going to raise the hackles of their leaders and protests from their populace if they’re seen to acquiesce to Trump.
Like I said before, if Russia’s belligerence isn’t enough to get them to improve their own defense capabilities, Trump pissing them off isn’t going to be either. And Obama’s ineffective diplomacy does not excuse Trump’s incompetent diplomacy.
Question is what happens if Trump follows through. Are they going to say “we really believe it’s important that NATO have X level of deterrence capability but we won’t do it because we’re not letting Trump tell us what to do?” If so, then they’re beyond redemption and deserve Putin.
But I’m not certain that you’re correct. Russia’s belligerence might not be enough to get them to improve their capabilities if they think push comes to shove the US will just bail them out. If they think the US won’t do it, that might be a different story.
But again, if it’s not, then let them face Putin on their own.
Or, another way of looking at it is to rank the three possibilities in order of preference. For me the ranking is as follows:
1 The US cuts spending on NATO and European members pick up the slack.
2. The US cuts spending on NATO and European members don’t pick up the slack.
3. The US keeps the same level of spending.
This seems like one of those games psychologists play – it’s not just about we prefer, and what Canada/UK/etc. prefer, it’s about what the European/Canada NATO countries believe that we prefer, and what we believe that they prefer. Assuming that there is substantial fear of Putin and Russia, then most European countries would rank them 3-1-2. If they believe that we prefer 1-2-3, like you do, then they won’t “call our bluff”, and would raise their spending. If they believe our preference is actually 1-3-2, then they’ll call our bluff.
I think it’s more likely that the US military/security professionals actually prefer 1-3-2 – they/we would rather spend a few extra bucks than see Russia dominate the Baltics. But in order to “win” this deal, we have to make our allies believe that we prefer 1-2-3.
Who knows what’s going to happen.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
How has Russia’s hand been strengthened, then, by NATO countries spending less on defense? Would Russia NOT have monkeyed with Ukraine if Denmark or Spain had more tanks? I am inclined to believe that would not have deterred them in the slightest.
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The lack of commitment to NATO by several members has pretty obviously spurred Russia to test the waters. You seriously believe that if NATO was showing a strong, unified front and not being propped up by the US, who’s commitment to things like the Ukraine is uncertain at best, would have no effect on what Russia did or didn’t do?? You think that a strong military is no deterrence at all?? 
It might be arbitrary, but it’s what they agreed to. The fact that most NATO members aren’t meeting it and haven’t been for quite a while kind of shows that lack of commitment to the alliance. Most of the countries could meet those goals fiscally…certainly the big players could. Politically, you are probably right, but then, perhaps the leaders of those countries need to rethink whether they should be in the alliance and put it in those terms to their voters and citizens. If, say, Canada finds it politically impossible (it’s certainly fiscally possible for such a wealthy country), then they should tell the voting public that either they come up to the 2% agreed upon or they need to, with regrets, leave the alliance. I have no idea what Canadian voters would say to that, but they could have the choice at least.
Like you said, it’s doubtful that the Russians would try a conventional war directly against NATO. Their strategy is obviously one of picking at the edges and pushing to see if there is any push back. Here is where that lack of commitments comes in…what is Russia’s assessment of NATOs response to a take over of the Ukraine? How about the Baltic states? Really, it hinges on what would America’s response be, since many of the NATO nations are obviously less than fully committed to the alliance. If they were sure that the US would sit it out or only make a token protest I’m fairly sure they would try it. I’m equally sure that if the European members of NATO were showing their commitments to the alliance by meeting their target spending that Russia would be unsure if it would be worth it to them. YMMV of course.
By showing their willingness to abide by the spending targets they agreed upon they show a commitment to the alliance right there. By not doing so it brings into question how committed they are…and whether, push comes to shove they would stick together, especially if it’s one of those ‘perhiperal’ countries in the Baltics that got attacked.
Looked at from our perspective we did pretty much all the heavy lifting. This isn’t to make light of the sacrifices of our allies or the 120 men and women Canada (and the UK, France, German…a whole host of countries, many not even IN NATO) lost, but consider who deployed the most troops, did the most support and footed the largest part of the bill. I can understand the bitterness in how it turned out…especially the part where we wandered off to Iraq instead of focusing on Afghanistan. I don’t think that it makes us ‘a little crass’ though to point out that many members, such as your own country, aren’t and haven’t been participating in their spending to the targets you all agreed to meet. From what I can tell, Canada hasn’t met it’s spending targets since…well, ever it doesn’t look like. Not since before they were agreed upon (the last time Canada spent 2% of it’s GDP on it’s military was in the early 70’s from what I can tell). Right now it doesn’t even look like you guys are spending 1% of your GDP on your military. Perhaps you really should consider whether you should be in NATO at all, if your people really don’t want to spend what you should?
I don’t know who “they” are. Honestly, I’ve never heard anyone outside of the USA say the USA should keep spending a ridiculous amount on defense. The argument is that the USA should not abandon its NATO commitments, which doesn’t actually require that the American government spend as much as it’s spending. After all, the USA doesn’t have the ground forces in Europe it used to, either. Current US defense spending levels are not necessary to maintain NATO.
[QUOTE=XT]
The lack of commitment to NATO by several members has pretty obviously spurred Russia to test the waters. You seriously believe that if NATO was showing a strong, unified front and not being propped up by the US, who’s commitment to things like the Ukraine is uncertain at best, would have no effect on what Russia did or didn’t do?? You think that a strong military is no deterrence at all?
[/QUOTE]
I again have to point out, for the third time now, that NATO has a stronger military than Russia.
Ukraine, which is not a NATO member, would not have been any more defended by NATO if Italy and Germany spent a bit more on their defense. That’s just silly. NATO had no practical way to stop the invasion of Crimea or the intervention in the Donbass region short of starting what would have ended up being a nuclear war. It doesn’t matter oif NATO had 500 tanks or five thousand, and I’m honestly kind of puzzled as to how more NATO spending changes that. I would remind you that when NATO was a much larger force, it sure didn’t stop the Soviets from stomping on Hungary and Czechoslovakia. We stood by and let it happen, because no matter our might, those aren’t NATO and trying to intervene would have meant starting Armageddon.
Your “picking at the edges” scenario fails to effectively distinguish between countries that are not actually in NATO (Ukraine) and ones that are (Poland, the Baltic states.) Russia has not made any effort to invade those places because they’d be going to war with NATO, and they cannot win that war. Not at current spending levels. Not at more spending levels. It’s an unwinnable war; best case scenario would be an embarrassing, regime-toppling defeat, and worse case scenario is the extinction of Russia and everyone else north of the Equator. What absolutely WOULD allow Russia to invade Latvia or whatever is if the NATO commitment falls apart. Then they can take it and, of course, if there’s no NATO, too bad so sad for the Latvians. The whole point of NATO is the threat of overwhelming response to an attack on a member state - a response backed up by nuclear arsenals.
Again, this isn’t to say NATO shouldn’t spend more. But threatening to dissolve the alliance is a far greater threat than how much Italy is spending and has, let’s be honest, no chance at all of working. Antipathy to Trump outside the USA is almost impossible to overstate and what fans he does have are all isolationists and Putin patsies.
Fucking up NATO by bumbling around making threats and acting petulant is precisely what Putin is hoping Trump will do, if not outright advising/telling him to do it. He doesn’t want NATO to stay together, he wants it to break apart, because he can take the Baltics if NATO won’t defend them, no matter how individually powerful the erstwhole NATO countries are.
In any event, what needs to happen from a spending point of view is not some silly target; it’s the establishment of what military capabilities NATO should have and who should deliver them. As has already been pointed out, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference if Portugal hits two percent, and arbitrary targets create perverse incentives - Canada could raise its defense spending by simply increasing salaries, which would be great for its soldiers but not actually increase military capability. You also have the issue of how to account for capital spending; as you point out Canada’s at about one percent, but is about to embark on huge capital projects, including the replacement of literally the entire navy, a project which by itself will enormously increase military spending during the construction of the warships. (There is also a new jet fighter fleet to buy, though that is such a screwed up situation no one yet knows if we’re going to spend “A jillion dollars” or “A hillion dollars.”) Do you stop counting that once the ships/jets are built? Or do you extrapolate that cost over the course of the useful lifetime of the warships and jets? What makes sense is not what Canada spends but to establish what its commitment should be; what specific military capability should be provided? What level of surface combat capability in the Atlantic? What level of air power that can be deplayed to Europe without weakening NORAD? Should there be a permanent Canadian combat formation in Europe, and if so, of what size and sort?
Oh, and let’s be honest an acknowledge that membership in NATO is in some cases a practical benefit to NATO. I don’t think Iceland has a military, but the benefits of having Iceland as a NATO member are clear.
[QUOTE=RickJay]
I again have to point out, for the third time now, that NATO has a stronger military than Russia.
[/QUOTE]
Well of course they do…the US is in the alliance, and by far the US is the strongest military nation on earth. Take the US out of the equation though and that is no longer the case because of how much many of the strongest NATO members have drawn down on their military and military spending for the last decade.
Ukraine was a probe by the Russians. They have gotten enough pushback that they haven’t, openly, tried to do more after they annexed the Crimea. No, Ukraine wasn’t a NATO member…but it’s still in Europe, and Russia was feeling out the European response. It is also a demonstration that, despite an agreement between Russia and the Ukraine, Russia still did and continues to do what it did, despite the Ukrainians agreeing to give up their nukes for the security promisses.
As for your broader question here, I think that the fact that most NATO members aren’t committed enough to the alliance to spend what they all agreed upon, arbitrary as it was, is telling. It’s also telling that most of the countries, in good times and bad have consistently not met their targets over large periods of time. If it was a single year or two it probably wouldn’t have that great an effect. But spending less than the 2% year after year degrades those militaries more and more over time. Canada’s military is called a shell…and so is Germany’s. If you honestly can’t see how that effects the perception of a country like Russia I don’t know how to explain it to you in terms we can have a mutual perspective to view this issue from.
I guess it depends on what happens next. Thus far, Russia has content itself with probes in the Ukraine and some other former USSR provinces as well as trial balloons and talk about places like the Baltic states. My feelings based on talking to friends I have in Europe as well as what I’ve seen on this message board and articles I’ve read on the BBC is that…well, I have no idea how NATO (and more specifically the citizens of some of the NATO members) would react to an invasion of one of the Baltic states by Russia. I dont’ know how the US would react, and because of how much of NATO has drawn down it’s really the US and UK who are key, with the US being pretty obviously the largest factor.
Sure. In their case they give us a lot of strategic real estate and access that we otherwise wouldn’t have. Even if they committed to the 2% it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Canada, however, is a large economy, and would make a difference. Germany as well. France has been, until recently, a major contribution, as is the UK who is one of the few to meet it’s target spending. Yes, Iceland’s main contribution is just it’s location and access.
OK, then what commitments are those that are in play?
I have to point out that nobody is seriously suggesting that NATO would lose such a war, so I think you’re arguing a strawman here. As I wrote on the first page of this thread:
Trump has threatened to dissolve the alliance, sure, but (a) he’s basically alone in doing so and (b) his top advisers are clearly walking back that position. The question really isn’t, “Is a US withdrawal going to destroy NATO?” but more like, “How much is NATO weakened when three-quarters of its members act like they don’t really care about the alliance?”
That’s a fair point. So tell me how many infantry battalions Portugal should have.
I don’t get “The argument”, it seems to boil down to ‘we refuse to do our part, but the US shouldn’t abandon us, and to cover the fact that we’re not doing our part we’re going to criticize US spending in hopes that you ignore our spending’. Why exactly should the US keep to its NATO commitments if the other member nations are freely and abandoning theirs, and have been for decades? If NATO is doing something important, then EVERYONE in it should be keeping up their commitments, instead of just letting the US carry the load. And if it’s not, then it’s in the best interests of the US to ditch the alliance and only commit to actions that are in its own interests.
Do you have a cite for that, and do you mean NATO as a whole or NATO without the US? I’ve seen someone make the claim, but haven’t seen any support for the claim, and can’t find handy totals with google for some reason.
Again, the US has spent two decades asking Europe nicely to pay what it agreed it should, why is the US somehow obligated to stay in an alliance with ‘allies’ that refuse to pull their weight? Threatening to dissolve the alliance has a better chance of working than continuing Obama’s policy, which resulted in a significant decrease in spending. It’s bizarre that on one hand you present NATO as the absolutely neccessary alliance that the US is morally wrong to contemplate leaving, but on the other hand are perfectly find with other countries not meeting their commitments to the alliance because they don’t like the current US president. Either NATO really is important, in which case Europe should hold their nose and do the right thing, or it isn’t, in which case the US should just ditch it instead of making one-sided commitments.
No, France Germany and the U.K. together spend more and have similar active personnel compared to Russia. Add in Turkey which doesn’t spend so much but it puts active personnel way above Russia.
