Germany is not only hitting the mark of 2% (for now with Sondervermögen) but is also trying its best but you can't just snap with your fingers and change obsolete structures, modernise and replace equipment even if we have 3 times the budget.
There are ongoing difficulties with figuring out how the different national forces slot into a battle plan. Nearly three years after the start of the Ukraine war, the command and control arrangements in NATO remain flimsy, and forward-deployed forces remain relatively small. There is still no responsive layer cake, or the modern equivalent (multinational divisions are what they are gunning for, information on follow on forces or mobilization forces is very vague for either security purposes/they haven't figured that part out yet).
From a strictly economic point of view, the invasion was a great mistake equivalent to Italy's entry into the Second World War, both Russia and Italy could have sold peace very dearly for great material benefits. But for Russians, other psychological factors that are difficult to understand from our mentality are more important. Russia is a huge country with gigantic natural resources that has historically been denied an economically feasible outlet to the sea, the country has been invaded twice in a century and ideologically poisoned by German philosophers whose theories put into practice have caused enormous suffering to humanity. Russia has been surrounded during the Cold War with a ring of atomic bases and treated internationally as a contagious patient who was denied the benefits of the Marshall Plan. Russians have serious internal problems like everyone else and are furious about their recent history and worried about the changes that are coming. Despite his proven intelligence, its leader Putin was psychologically traumatized in East Berlin by the fall of the wall when he was only a grassroots Chekist with deep political beliefs.
I am very aware of that (in 1798, the Russian tried to acquire my homeland from the Knights) but that does not justify a take over of a sovereign nation. This isn't the 18th Century anymore.
The rescue will occur. But only when it's in the best interests of the U.S. That's what happened during World War II. However, the present cannot be put into a tidy box, can it?
"The veneer of civilization is very thin." Margaret Thatcher
Hybrid spending lol.
www.bbc.com
The defense of Europe has to be the US priority, not the EU's, is what I gather.
The missed opportunity was in the early days of the post cold war era when Russia inquired about NATO membership. We should have jumped at the opportunity and devised a path to that end.
A different perspective - actual funding rather than %GDP:
Note that this really shows the impact of the different GDPs.
Would you say we spend a third of our budget on European defense? Perhaps a fourth? Surely the nuclear deterrent forces count. That's about $40 billion a year according to the CBO. $60 billion if we count the DOE weapon labs which never get accounted to Dept of Defense spending. That's 2/3 of Germany's defense spending without a single conventional weapon or soldier ever going to Europe.
Generally it is true - look at Poland and the Baltic states:
It is a combination of the bigger GDP of the USA and the historically greater "want" to spend on the military (a whole subject for discussion...). There is nothing other than internal US choices that drives the US spend though.
Given what has happened in Ukraine and their history with Russia, all do believe, with good reason, that Russia is a genuine threat. I don't believe there is any false narrative involved.
Is there a cogent reason that the we are devoting more money to European defense than say great continental powers Germany, France, Italy and Spain combined? Our defense spending in general is more than the rest of NATO en masse. Can you articulate an argument why the United States must stay in an unequally yoked agreement with such powers if they now decide not to "want" to spend more money on the military, particularly for European defense?
The budgets/numbers shown int his thread are whole of Defence budgets. NATO spending does not just equal European Defence spending. As for a "cogent argument", I suggest you ask the US Govt. Note however that most requests to cut the US Defense budget aren't supported...
Stop acting like the US is forced into NATO - it has been the dominant member since its inception over 75yrs ago. As for spending more, the majority of members are actually meeting or exceeding their mutually agreed to 2% of GDP guideline.
foreignpolicy.com
Especially when one considers that for the majority of its existence, no-one's budgets have been there.
That works both ways. Neither side would have a hope in hell to secure all of it. On a smaller scale, remember what happened in the Yom Kippur war?
