I thought I’d take a look at what NATO says gets spent (Table 2)
NATO Europe + Canada spent $238 Billion
NATO USA spent $680 Billion
So…what part of $918 Billion is incapable of opposing a Russian military budget of $70 billion?
Or maybe a better question would be, assuming you squeeze an additional $70 billion dollars out of NATO Europe + Canada what would you actually get?
Note I’m assuming that a $70 billion dollar (10%) reduction in military spending in a GOP/Trump administration is a nonstarter.
You get additional combat capability in Europe. Nobody is proposing that the US would lessen its defense spending. The US would likely be freed to spend more time and attention on other things, from China to ISIL in Africa or whatever.
What additional capabilities are required? Strip the US/Canada spending out and it’s a $218 Billion vs. $70 Billion fight.
But they do act like they care. They speak of its importance all the time. They just don’t spend at the levels the U.S. wants*. Sure some Russian defence expert could say “Ooh, they aren’t spending as much as America wants. That proves they aren’t so invested.” But then he still has to consider that NATO sans USA still outspends and out staffs Russia.
*because let’s face it, NATO “agreed” to a 2% GDP target to shut America up with possibly the U.K. fully on board.
Russia, however, has a large invested military already in terms of equipment from the old USSR days. So, the money they are mainly spending is on maintenance and troop training. You can’t compare different military forces based on what they are spending annually today. You have to compare capabilities. Basically, Russia has the ability and means to project force into, say, the Baltic regions…and the UK, France and Germany by and large don’t. Doesn’t matter if they spend more combined, they don’t have the capabilities to move equivalent forces to the Baltics that Russia can…and no real way (without the US) to kick the Russians out, sans nukes of course, once they are there. Full stop.
Right…this isn’t going to change the US’s military budget at all. We would simply be able to refocus to, say, Asia and commit more of our forces there in trying to keep the NKs from going nuts and basically reign in the Chinese and reassure our other allies in the South and East China Sea regions.
What it would give Europe, however, is a strong military that would be a credible deterrent even without the US. Why Europeans would want to be so heavily dependent on the US is a mystery to me…I know that many Europeans don’t see us as all that reliable, especially now with the Trumpster at the helm. I’d think they’d want to be able to stand more on their own and not depend so much on the US wrt their own collective security. 
Even with a shaky NATO, or no NATO, I’m wondering what Putin would have to gain out of annexing the Baltics by force. A few extra sea ports, and direct land connection to Kaliningrad. No major natural resources.
The same can be said for several of his other acquisitions over the last decade or so. From a paying perspective, what, exactly did the Crimea give Russia that it didn’t already have? What would the Ukraine really give them that they don’t already have? Putin seems to want to reassemble the old Soviet Empire.
Plus, you can’t discount that this could be tests of resolve for NATO. It would shatter the alliance if NATO allowed the Baltic states, or Poland or some of the other eastern European nations in NATO to fall into Russian control. Without NATO Russia would have a freer hand in Europe. I doubt even Putin thinks he could or would conquer all of Western Europe. Fighting on their own ground and under that sort of threat, Germany and the rest would fight like tigers and Russia simply doesn’t have the means to invade and conquer them. But having the Baltic states would give Russia several strategic advantages. Heck, even controlling the Ukraine would give them some advantages that you can’t put in terms of resources or profit.
Because it might well prevent global nuclear war. That’s a win/win.
I’m not saying the U.S. shouldn’t force other countries to step up their contributions. Abandoning NATO immediately in concert with Russian expansionism is not a good way of going about it.
No, it doesn’t. It’s at best a stupid idea, and at worst Trump acting in a treasonous manner if in fact he’s doing it to please his Russian debtors, which is not an entirely implausible scenario.
I’m sorry, but I don’t recall saying anything like that.
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OK, then what commitments are those that are in play?
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The commitment to consider an attack on a NATO member on its home territory, or its naval forces in the North Atlantic, as defined in the North Atlantic Treaty, as an attack against all NATO members, and as an act of war against which appropriate force will be used to stop it.
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…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.
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In terms of what would actually face a Russian invasion, I don’t think the UK is the second or even third key. I mean, the active French army is larger, and of course a lot of the UK’s forces aren’t on the continent. In terms of active forces in continental Europe, Germany, France, Poland, and Italy would certainly all far outnumber the British.
A precise count of U.S. troops stationed in Europe that are actually combat troops can be a little tough to divine, because the U.S. uses Germany as a headquarters for HQ and support services throughout much of Eurasia and I’m having some trouble separating the actual combat units from the paper pushers, doctors and whatnot, but it’s somewhere between 40,000 and 70,000 - a very large force, but still nowhere near the size of the German, Italian, French or Polish armed forces. (It is also disproportionately air force/Navy.)
[QUOTE=RickJay]
In terms of what would actually face a Russian invasion, I don’t think the UK is the second or even third key. I mean, the active French army is larger, and of course a lot of the UK’s forces aren’t on the continent. In terms of active forces in continental Europe, Germany, France, Poland, and Italy would certainly all far outnumber the British.
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In terms of capability to deploy large (well, relatively) forces beyond their borders I think the UK has the edge. However, I agree…France certainly has a powerful military, probably the best on the continent currently. Germany, who SHOULD have the finest military has allowed it to hollow out, and their capabilities, especially for projection are very limited. Poland has a large (as far as numerically) military, to be sure, but, again, limited capabilities to project that. Italy is the same.
Poland doesn’t really have to project their army in a scenario of a general war with Russia. They have front row seats already, as it were.
But then wouldn’t that lock the US into spending enough money in order to meet this type of commitment? I don’t see how you can separate the two and say “you need to commit to defend us but we’re not telling you to spend any money to do it with”.
I’m not a military expert, but I’m pretty sure a nation and its military have to build out forces commensurate with possible requirements, and if you’ve committed to defend Europe in the event of an attack then you would have to have forces capable of doing this.
How much money is that, anyway?
I know diplomacy is hard.
Well, that’s the thing; no one has officially defined what this even means. Based on current force arrangements, it certainly appears NATO is way too big an egg for Russia to crack. Russia has a big armed forces but NATO can match them man for man in Europe, and is probably technologically way past them in most respects, not that I am unaware of the fact people have said that sort of thing before and paid the price.
But “capable of defending Europe” is a vague statement. From whom, and to what extent? It’s very important to bear something in mind; it is NATO doctrine that they reserve the right to immediately respond with nuclear weapons if Russia invades a NATO country. The US, UK and France obviously don’t have as many nukes as they used to (neither does Russia) and are more oriented towards SLBM deterrence, but the concept of first use remains a cornerstone of NATO nuclear doctrine.
The fact that NATO might strike back against an overwhelming conventional attack with nuclear weapons is absolutely a huge, huge part of deterrence. Allowing any doubt as to NATO’s willingness to fight back against aggressive is to allow doubt that the nuclear option isn’t on the table, which is the single thing Russia is most afraid of. I realize it’s a putrid situation, but in a world with nukes that’s kind of what you have; you must be willing to threaten to use them so someone doesn’t put you in a situation where you have to consider using them.
By far, this is my largest worry about a Trump administration. NATO deterring Russia from attacking us is what prevents war. If you show a crack in the armor, and Russia invades Poland, well, maybe we let Russia have Poland. But maybe not; once the match is lit then suddenly this country’s at war and that one and then someone panics and boom.
Should other NATO countries keep up with their defensive commitments? Of course. Let’s establish what they are and put pressure on them; and yes, Canada’s got to get off its ass and start retooling its navy and air force already, those programs should have been underway by now.
As I stated before, this isn’t an issue of Europe not making progress on reaching the 2% goal. Europe, as a whole, is moving BACKWARDS from the 2% goal.
As to your contention about how “they” act like they do care; are you counting lip service as a real thing? If so, that gives Republicans a great campaign platform: “Oh, we care about veterans. Just because we propose to cut VA spending, doesn’t mean we don’t care about our vets! They are the best!”
If it’s really such a win, then why aren’t you supporting strong measures to make it a strong alliance, instead of it being ‘the US and some guys that can’t actually do anything themselves’? If the threat of nuclear war isn’t enough to get Europe to pay their part, then it’s clearly not a real enough threat to justify the US paying Europe’s part.
That’s not what’s happening. Telling NATO that the US is tired of putting up with their freeloading after more than two decades of asking nicely and giving them a deadline is anything but immediate. And expecting ‘oh, pretty please, do what you agreed to’ to suddenly work after decades is just stupid, so I disagree that doing something that at least has a chance to work is better. I disagree with Trump’s delivery, but I’m 100% in favor of the message - if the rest of NATO won’t contribute, then the US should stop committing to contributing in their place.
To go back to the roommate who’s not paying rent analogy, this is like the roommate getting called on not paying rent responding that it’s a bad time to threaten to kick him out because of bad things happening in his life this particular month. There’s always going to be some kind of geopolitical threat in the Middle East or Russia, just like the roommate is always going to have a sob story for ‘this month’, so if I were to accept the ‘bad time’ argument I’d accept that somehow the US is obligated to keep supporting freeloaders indefinitely, because it will always be a ‘bad time’ to call them out for freeloading.
You say that you’re not opposed to the US forcing other countries to actually contribute, but you also say that the US should not make it’s commitment to those countries contingent on their contribution. The only way to stop freeloaders is to stop paying their way until they stop freeloading, as we’ve seen with NATO two decades of ‘pretty please’ hasn’t done jack. And I note that you haven’t shown what alternate plan the US should use to force NATO nations to pull their weight.
Why do you think that any pressure other than ‘if you don’t make your commitments to the alliance, we won’t commit to the alliance either’ will be effective? “Put pressure on them” is weasel words in this case; the ‘pretty please with sugar on top’ and ‘we’ll be upset if you don’t’ pressure of the last two decades clearly doesn’t work, and you object to ‘pay your part or we back out’, so what pressure are you really asking for?
Maybe he means literally putting pressure on them. Like, throwing France on the ground and sitting on its chest until it comes up with the extra cash.
Unless being about 60% of the size of Russia once combined counts as similar in your mind, you might want to check your math.
Force structure is different than the ability to effectively employ and sustain it. In fact size can make the issue worse if you can’t train and supply those larger forces adequately after covering personnel costs.
Just looking at military size, South Korea should have been easily able to repulse North Korea’s initial attack in 1950. Digging a little deeper to force structure shows they needed help since they were more lightly equipped than NK troops. Once the US got involved it should have been easy…except it wasn’t. Early on we still continued to get pushed back, even once numbers engaged on the ground were equal. We fielded what was a prime example of a hollow force. It showed. The willingness and ability to continue shoving troops into the meat grinder allowed us to eventually retain the key terrain around Pusan. It was a near run, though. There was a real risk of getting kicked off the peninsula.
It’s hard for any of us to tell if the relevant spending to support actual wartime operations is in place based strictly on open source information. Putin likely has a better idea than we’ll ever have through open source. Mattis and his counterparts at the conference should have the best idea. The open source clues we had before the 2014 agreement to increase spending ( “and this time we really mean it!”) don’t make it look like a simple force structure comparison is enough. Professionals study logistics and the limited clues we have is that the logistics to actually fight aren’t in place for a lot of NATO members.
It’s not like that target, as crude a measure as it is, is something any single one of them disagrees with. They didn’t agree to crude, but easy to publicly measure, targets as an alliance because they didn’t expect to have performance publicly talked about. In the words of the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (from Norway) shortly after Trump’s election:
I’d guess Mattis’ statement wasn’t a surprise to Stoltenberg either. Mattis called him on his first day in the office. In the follow up press releases Stoltenberg said this:
Oh and they held a joint press conference before the start of the ministerial meeting where Mattis made his statement. Stoltenberg is the only one that raises non-US spending levels during the press conference. Even after highlighting recent increases he says “It’s not enough.” It’s almost like they had a gasp plan between the two of them to make a big deal out of spending.
No idea.
I’m not clear on what you’re saying with all this. It sounds like you’re saying that NATO policy is to respond to Russia with nuclear first strikes, which has two implications, 1) that there’s minimal if any extra spending required from the US, and 2) that US commitment to the nuclear policy is crucial. I don’t understand either of these (if these are in fact what you’re saying).
If all you need is nuclear weapons then you shouldn’t need anything at all from the US. England and France both have nuclear weapons of their own. End of story. Obviously it’s not as simple as that.
As to why it’s not as simple as that, I would think the idea is only to respond with nuclear if it’s really really threatening, not if it’s more minor provocation, with “minor” being something of a sliding scale. So you need considerable conventional weapons so that you can possibly hold off the Russians without it escalating to an “overwhelming conventional attack”. Especially with the Russians having recently perfected the art of using “home grown militias” and the like. I doubt if NATO policy is to respond to an invasion of Poland by some supposed militia with a massive nuclear strike.
But the bottom line is that NATO doesn’t need the US to join if it’s just a matter of going nuclear in all cases, because they can do it themselves. So I assume they’re looking for something else, possibly including both nuclear and conventional weaponry, both of which cost $$.