Of course not, that’s not what I was saying. Our military spending is absurd. But NATO countries do need to meet their treaty obligations, which most aren’t doing.
And the reality is much more mixed than the raw numbers. Those European allies provide proportionally more of the non direct military spending on the alliance, and the actual costs of the alliance are much more equitable.
Also there has been measures put in place to get the others up to 2% over the next decade. We’ll see if that happens though.
Thanks for that info! I was not aware of that and agree that they should meet their obligations under the treaty.
Just to be clear how small this is, 2% of Estonia’s 2015 GDP would have been a little more than $400m. The average wage in the country is a little over $1000/month, and they have about 17,500 active duty military (smaller than Pennsylvania’s National Guard). If everyone got the average wage, that’s half their commitment right there. If they buy and replace their gear, replace ammo, and pay the upkeep for their bases, that’s it.
edit - just an aside, the population of Estonia is about half the size of the Pittsburgh metro area.
I’m really not convinced a flat percentage is the way to measure commitment, either. Do we really want Germany spending 2% of its GDP on the military? Would that contribute more to the overall health of the alliance than their general economic prosperity and stability? Or perhaps the other way around–do we want a sliding scale so we do in fact get more from countries that can afford it? And what are these percentages based on–and how can such an arbitrary number keep pace with actual events?
While I agree everyone in an alliance needs to contribute, I don’t necessarily think that contributions can be measured using the same metrics for everyone.
And in the end, if non-US members anted up more money, and we ended up depending on them for critical stuff to more of an extent than we do now, someone would point out that we would be even more at their mercy when it came to policy decisions, etc. You can’t have control without spending the lion’s share of the costs, I’m thinking. And Washington, no matter what it says, really does want control.
Does the 2% commitment go back into the cold war? My feeling is it had to be higher then, but no idea.
Edit: found this http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1758-5899.12328/full
That’s exactly what this is.
Yeah, it’s 2%… of whatever you got.
A fixed rate is not a sliding scale. Just sayin’. Again the thing is to figure out what you want, and then figure out what’s the best way to get it. I’m not at all sure we have much clarity on what we actually want from our allies. I’m also not sure that the figures we’re working with at this point are the best way of getting there, wherever there is.
Equity is hard to balance. But it’s particularly hard when there’s lack of clarity. During the Cold War at least there were some fairly clear divisions of labor, meaning some countries could focus their spending on very particular tasks like ASW, defense of their own territory, or air defense. But the mission now is…undefined. Undefined missions can lead to unlimited costs. I’m much more concerned about having clear goals and effective means of reaching them than I am about the specific distribution of costs. I suspect that if the US could actually articulate clear European policies and a clear vision for NATO, we’d have less trouble getting people to pony up cash.
Maybe, but I suspect Europe would rather just not spend the money. Historically they had little to no problem doing it, but now they can’t really be bothered.
In 1990 everyone hit their marks except Luxembourg and Canada (and Canada was 1.9% it was the first year they missed it). Lux has pretty consistently been 1.2%. They’re also basically Rhode Island, so it didn’t matter much.
The alliance does the same thing it always did, the members just started not paying for it after the Cold War. If they still want said alliance they can meet the requirements. They did for over 50 years without much issue. Once Russia seemed in decline they started slacking a bit, now that it’s resurgent and invading neighbors… well, seems like maybe it’s time to make sure you’re meeting obligations.
I certainly have no quarrel with this. I simply am suggesting that one, we figure out what we want out of NATO, two, that we get together with our allies and come to agreement on number one, and three, figure out a way to pay for it that’s equitable. I just don’t think fixating on an arbitrary number is useful, especially as there’s no way to actually “punish” anyone without hurting ourselves more.
Am I overly concerned about this? I feel that this provocative move by Russia will get overlooked in the general shitstorm that is the Trump administration. To me this violation is a big deal, and the fact that it will probably get ignored sets a terrible precedent.
Someone tell me this isn’t a big deal.
Yep yep.
YOU’RE NOT HELPING!!!
Neither is Discourse. Complete sentence.
Just rumours swirling for now. Best not to worry until we see some confirmation.
I will eat my hat if a Russia has set off a nuke
It’s not a big deal. It’s not nothing, but it’s certainly not a crisis.
It’s been in violation since at least 2014 when they test fired the thing, shortly before the invasion of Ukraine.
Why has no one mentioned the elephant in the room, that the treaty is a full 30 years old?
My understanding of this from when it came to light in 2014 was that it has as much to do with weapon system obsolescence as anything else.
At some point the ICBMs will also reach end of life and new ones designed and fabricated.
To parse a new cruise missile as a nuclear threat is really stretching it. Gorbachev probably only assented to it because he knew they were flat broke and its as good a way as any to cut spending.
These treaty’s are an artifact of the cold war, and like all treaty’s that have fallen behind the facts on the ground, they are either updated and ratified, forgotten or eventually violated.
iI think I read somewhere that Russia claims that missile defence systems that can intercept intermediate and long range missles (which the US has a huge advantage over Russia) are a violation of the START treaty. And they claim their actions were in response to that.
Undermining the deterence capability of the MAD doctrine is a sure way to provoke the other party.
The thing is that US was not specifically targetting Russia’s nuclear arsenal but developing the anti-missile systems was a response to the intermediate range missile systems developed in Iran.
It’s a real mess. That is what I remembered from that period.
Edit: There was also the threat from the SCUDs missile system in Iraq if I remember correctly. So yea, Middle East is one giant mess.
That’s a good point about the age of the treaty and the obsolescence of existing systems. While obviously Russia could have and should have handled it more, um, diplomatically, from one point of view, from another POV they are just making rather shrewd use of the inevitable to send not-so-subtle messages without, in the final analysis, really pushing any hot buttons. That is, with a US administration that understands such things that would be the case (as with the previous administrations I’d say). Now, who knows what this administration might do? Does anyone in the administration even have a passing knowledge of strategic systems, deterrence, arms control policy, and the like?
The ABM stuff is wicked complex. Any antimissile system tends to make people edgy, as the intent really doesn’t matter. Once you have a system capable of intercepting ICBMS or even IRBMS in a reliable fashion, even if it’s focused on so-called rogue states, it’s a hop skip and a jump, one line of thought goes, to tasking that system against the big guys. In the past, this was less of an issue when it was clear a small system designed to deter or protect against say North Korea could hardly make a dent in a massive launch from the USSR/Russia, In today’s world of somewhat reduced arsenals and less likelihood of massive exchanges, smaller, more efficient ABM systems can be seen as fairly destabilizing. From a certain point of view.