NATO defence spending

[kqcke for you]

As I note in the last part of my (admittedly rambly and long) post, the guideline is not the issue.

The budget fight is a strategic and political debate over the role of NATO and how/whether countries in Europe can contribute to US national power in competition against China (and possibly other up-and-coming nations as well).

The Germans are not being kicked out just because of the budget thing, they're being kicked out because they're not adding their own power to American power in sufficient amounts. It's nothing so banal as individual dollars to individual defense contractors

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.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

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).

https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1937

I'd have to read up much more on current NATO planning for their central front, but first impressions are not particularly impressive. They haven't even gotten a headquarters together for Finland, and are planning on running that front from Norfolk! It's been two years, you could fight a whole war in that time!

Money is not the only problem; indeed, if you tackled the political/operational/organizational issues, the money would be much better spent. With the changing international security landscape, it's not entirely clear what everyone's priorities are. Heck, the Trump transition team has a broad swathe of opinion internally. This is a time of great changes not seen for a century, and that's true in the Atlantic as well as the Pacific. To quote Deng Xiaoping, one must cross the river by feeling the stones.

I would need to do more reading to see what the current state of thought is. My NATO reading is most from before 1989. The BAOR is gone, the West German Corps are gone, the front line is the Bug and beyond, they're not going back to the layer cake, and they're planning on multinational divisions and hoping to dovetail/hybridize with/supersede the EU. It's a new NATO for a new era.

https://www.egmontinstitute.be/app/uploads/2022/09/Sven-Biscop_PolicyBrief285_vFinal.pdf

Thankfully NATO has a library. Also they wrote their own science fiction, NATO 2099.

https://www.ndc.nato.int/

https://www.ndc.nato.int/nato2099/read.php

(Edit: The NATO 2099 comic book is pretty bad I think, worse than MARSOC FICINT but it's perhaps worth ten seconds to skim)

 

[Justo Miranda]

Remind me who invaded Ukraine again?

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.

Perhaps this is a good time to reverse the situation, negotiating.

It would not be more useful to use NATO's budget for 2025 in a decent economic aid plan... that does not end up in a numbered account?

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

Russia is a huge country with gigantic natural resources that has historically been denied an economically feasible outlet to the sea,

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.

 

[edwest4]

Trump has tapped into the traditional U.S. foreign policy - isolationism. There won't be any rescue. The country is too divided, and too tired, and the instinct to retreat and turtle up too strong.

By the way, 5% is meaningless. Percentages don't count, it's people and weapons, and Europe need enough of both to manhandle Russia if needed without relying on Trump coming to its rescue.

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?

 

[edwest4]

On a serious note underpinning my previous comments (envisioning a Canadian SRBM fleet pointed towards the south)... one has to be careful of militarism and rearmament, as one never knows how it will be used (or what reactions will be produced in others).

One point often overlooked about the war in Ukraine is this simple fact: The continued existence of an independent Ukraine is a 'peace dividend'. It is only the end of the Cold War, the decline in military spending and the long peace which allowed the Russian military to get so rusty (literally), and also produced a situation where the Russian public has little appetite for diverting funding from civilian projects to the military.

If Russia had maintained Cold War levels of military spending, then the Russian army would have had the logistics capacity to seize Kiev early on. No serious person could deny that Ukraine's army at the start of the war could have survived the Soviet army at its peak.

Soviet Military spending tended to fall in the range of 12%-21% of GDP... Russian military after three years of war and hundreds of thousands of casualties remains less than 6% of GDP...

It probably makes a lot more sense to keep military spending low (and encourage conventional disarmament of adversaries) while investing in the infrastructure to rapidly scale up military production and training in the event of conflict becoming likely.

The Russians are afraid of NATO. Among their demands is for the Ukrainian government to sign a document that prevents them from joining NATO or a similar organization. Putin is maneuvering his forces now to be in the best bargaining position with Trump when he comes to office.

 

[edwest4]

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 veneer of civilization is very thin." Margaret Thatcher

 

[Justo Miranda]

More juvenile comments along with the addition of pointless words and terms. Take "ethnic cleansing." My tribe doesn't like your tribe so we'll kill as many of your tribe as we can. Until the U.S. intervenes. Bosnia-Herzegovina. You want to fight among yourselves? Fine. The U.S. leaves NATO and all of you can figure out what to do next.

Trump, believe it or not, knows what he's doing. He's issued an ultimatum. He's waiting for a reply from Europe. If everyone dawdles. Fine. Sort it out on your own.

Trump is a businessman who understands the world in economic terms and no good negotiator bargains with ultimatums, the guy only wants to scare the Europeans (as if we weren't already scared enough) to sell us strictly defensive anti-aircraft systems... no one wants to see Micron attacking Russia.

 

[yeetmahboi]

product of the internet having turned into a tool for spreading lies

Hybrid spending lol.

Troll farms are cheap to maintain... until they reach rock-bottom living standards. But that's for the low-tier guys who are now being replaced en mass with bots. The more capable ones, generally graduates of political science, are masters of spreading doublethink, which by definition violates rules of critical thinking. So making sure your average citizen pass a common sense check like sneaking in fake scams or phishing attempts in their emails (c'mon feds, use your backdoors for something actually good) can effectively disable like 90% of propaganda. Make critical thinking great again!

You can probably cut like half of current cyberdefense spending just by having your trooper be normal and attend internet anonymity courses probably taught by your average anti-gov IT redditor. Unfortunately none is exempted from stupidity nowadays.

 

[chimeric oncogene]

This is from the commentary on NATO's New Strategic Concept 2022, NDC research paper #25, Sep 2022.

https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/autres/2022/NDC_RP_25.pdf

As you will see, even back then, the Americans were gunning for more than two percent; and there was discussion on the nature and role of NATO, with some noting the "beginnings of a new transatlantic bargain in a world of competitive multipolarity".

Trump's statements demonstrate continuity with as much as change from the Biden Administration in this regard.



As I also noted, even back then it was clear that the nature of this "new bargain" was deeply, deeply political.

We shall see if Strategic Concept 2025 has any new ideas...



Fault lines in NATO can be described in

https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1783

Documents are by NDC.

 

[edwest4]

This is from the commentary on NATO's New Strategic Concept 2022, NDC research paper #25, Sep 2022.

https://www.frstrategie.org/sites/default/files/documents/publications/autres/2022/NDC_RP_25.pdf

As you will see, even back then, the Americans were gunning for more than two percent; and there was discussion on the nature and role of NATO, with some noting the "beginnings of a new transatlantic bargain in a world of competitive multipolarity".

Trump's statements demonstrate continuity with as much as change from the Biden Administration in this regard.

View attachment 753512

As I also noted, even back then it was clear that the nature of this "new bargain" was deeply, deeply political.

We shall see if Strategic Concept 2025 has any new ideas...

View attachment 753513

Fault lines in NATO can be described in

https://www.ndc.nato.int/news/news.php?icode=1783

Documents are by NDC.

View attachment 753521

Concepts don't matter. From the U.S. about NATO to Europe. What are your plans? Today? Right now?

 

[Arjen]

The Danish government has listened carefully to utterances from across the Atlantic, and is promising action.

Denmark boosts Greenland defence after Trump repeats desire for US control

The huge package is announced after the president-elect said US ownership of Greenland was a "necessity".

www.bbc.com

An increase of funding for military presence in Greenland.

Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was a "double digit billion amount" in krone, or at least $1.5bn (£1.2bn).

He described the timing of the announcement as an "irony of fate". On Monday Trump said ownership and control of the huge island was an "absolute necessity" for the US.

Analysts say that the plan has been under discussion for a long time and should not be seen as a direct response to Trump's comments.

Until now Denmark has been very slow to expand its military capacity in Greenland, they say, but if the country is not able to protect waters around the territory against encroachments by China and Russia then US demands for greater control are likely to grow.

Unintended consequences - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[_Del_]

If there's not enough incentive right now then there will never be.

The defense of Europe has to be the US priority, not the EU's, is what I gather.

We further are to incentive them so they don't resent us.

 

[apparition13]

Good. Tighten the chain. The Liberal World Order should be maintained at all costs.

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.