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Mattis to NATO Allies: Pay Your Fair Share
Defense Secretary James Mattis met in Brussels Wednesday with the defense ministers of our NATO allies. His message was characteristically honest and blunt:
“I owe it to you all to give you clarity on the political reality in the United States and to state the fair demand from my country’s people in concrete terms,” Mattis said. “America will meet its responsibilities, but if your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to the alliance, each of your capitals needs to show its support for our common defense.”
…Mattis, a retired Marine general, recalled Wednesday that when he was NATO’s supreme allied commander of transformation from November 2007 to September 2009, he watched as then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned NATO nations that Congress and the American people “would lose their patience for carrying a disproportionate burden” of the defense of allies.
That impatience, Mattis said, is now a “governmental reality.”
“No longer can the American taxpayer carry a disproportionate share of the defense of western values,” Mattis said. “Americans cannot care more for your children’s security than you do. Disregard for military readiness demonstrates a lack of respect for ourselves, for the alliance and for the freedoms we inherited, which are now clearly threatened.”
Way to go, Mad Dog.
NATO countries have pledged to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense. Of the 28 member nations, only five have accomplished this modest goal: Estonia, Greece, Poland, the UK, and the US. That leaves 23 nations leaning on American largesse for their preservation.
Source: Defense One.
Canada only spends 0.99 percent of it’s GDP on defense; Belgium, Hungary, Spain, and tiny Luxembourg are also in the less-than-1-percent club. If even cash-strapped Greece can exceed the goal, is there any reason these first-world countries can’t take care of their own defense? But instead of raising their spending closer to the target, nine nations actually reduced their military budgets between 2014 and 2015.
President Trump has received a lot of flak for criticizing this lopsided financial arrangement, perhaps more for his style than the substance behind it. But I can’t see how anyone can criticize Mattis’s clear-eyed assessment of the situation. It’s the same point Trump has been making, but delivered in the general’s laconic style.
The majority of NATO members are falling down on the job and have been for years. With Russia, China, Iran, and ISIS on the prowl, they have no excuse not to pay their promised share.
Published in Economics, Military
The concurrent question is then: What are the costs of keeping our influence stronger than Russia? And not just economically, but politically and diplomatically too.
Of course, but we have a relatively good idea of what those costs are, don’t we?
There’s a big difference between the Soviet Union of 1950 and the Russia of today. Russia is but a shadow of its former self as the USSR in terms of territory, population, and economic power. Certainly Russia is an adversary, just not the adversary it once was. China exceeds Russia in all relevant measures. China’s GDP dwarfs Russia’s and GDP translates into the ability to make war, both cold and hot.
Time to look in the other direction.
We know what the financial costs have been, and the diplomatic ones, but what will they become?
Our ongoing shielding of them removes constaints on foolish behavior.
I read some revisionist theories about the Cold War, that almost make ya nostalgic for it. Well, except for the fact that we grew up knowing that the Emergency Broadcast System signal would be the last thing we’d ever hear..(now, of course, we know it will be “Allahu Akbar!”) But anyway:
We and USSR built up huge stockpiles of weapons, more than we could ever need, an industry in itself, which meant jobs–
and nobody did ever get nuked. “Mutually assured destruction” made actual use of the bombs, ah, impractical, to put it mildly.
I think they used to call it a “balance of power”, didn’t they? (Golly, that sounds old-fashioned…)
Then Reagan (“Ray-gun”, remember?) decided: nuh-uh! There would be destruction ,but not mutual destruction. We’d develop a system to thwart a Soviet attack on us, and in retaliation destroy them. It bankrupted the Soviets.
That may have looked for a while like the “end of history” if you didn’t count all the localized, increasingly violent, religious and tribal conflicts–but it was at most an intermission.
During the Cold War, we had an enemy, we knew who it was, we didn’t have to worry about fearing it, or being accused of xenophobia for calling it the enemy. Nobody accused us of “Russophobia”. (Which oddly, is rampant on the Left now, despite their century- long love affair with the Reds , 1917-2017; RIP….). Nobody suggested that the only way to save ourselves was to move a huge number of Russian-speaking Communists into our country, and to teach our children about Communism, and to encourage the girls to wear babushkas.
.Ah, the Cold War……a simpler time!
If we are, it is a self-inflicted Cold War. Frankly I don’t think so. Aside from Russia’s nuclear arsenal–which believe me, I understand that that is a concern–there is absolutely no other way that Russia can project power, particularly project power that is any real threat to us. “But what about invading Europe” I can hear you say. Sure, they could invade Europe, but how long do they hold the territory? How long could they withstand a conventional military engagement with a state that can actually match them in capability? Russia’s influence over Europe involves natural gas not tank battalions.
It’s worse than that. It can project power against our first amendment freedoms.
The problem is that, if you look at this as a multi-dimensional playing field, countries like Russia, China, and the Gulf States operate in dimensions we can’t or won’t.
Converting that to what we must spend/do in the few dimensions in which we are active is quite hard.
Such countries have state-owned or oligarch-owned industries that can give real or constructive bribes. If Russia offers a Eurocrat a $100k bribe, we might have to match it with a $10 million spending program (assuming the Eurocrat has the ability to graft off 1%).
Such countries can play favorites in terms of giving access to their own markets.
Russia has the oil and gas pipeline card.
HAHAHAHA!!!!! sorry for the all caps there but that was really funny.
I think disbanding NATO might have sense in the mid-90’s.
Ditto. It might have made sense in the mid-90’s. It could be disastrous now.
I thought we’d already pivoted to the Pacific.
I just heard one of the professional Newspeakers on NPR intone that some analysts were saying that it wasn’t who paid what that mattered, but that maybe the overall NATO budget was too low.
Government funds for NPR need to be shut off yesterday.
Why would anybody listen to NPR?
Keeping an eye on the enemy without having to talk to them. Plus it’s sort of interesting watching how they parrot the talking points.
Are you okay with Putin’s Russia having more influence over Europe than America? What will the costs of that be?
–I think Russia already has more influence over Europe than America and that many of the decisions to stop that happened over the last 4 years.
Russia’s influence over Europe involves natural gas not tank battalions.
–But what about Russia single handedly stealing the election and giving it to Trump! I mean it’s a super duper mega power!
I cant believe my game looks better and more real every day.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155413/visegrad-coming-war-eastern-europe
With friends like these…
All of which has done what to stop Russian aggression on its European border?
Strawman.
Worse than that, Germany might not be able to afford to pay the salaries of the hordes of unelected EU bureaucrats.
Good for him. Germany is out. Who is next?