By Sim Tack
At the NATO summit in Brussels that took place on July 11-12, the emphasis of discussions was once again on US President Trump’s accusations against European NATO partners that they are not spending enough of their financial resources on defense budgets. These accusations weren’t new, of course, though the persistent repetition of demands by the US administration for other NATO members to spend more on defense, and the latest demands of defense budgets being increased to 4% of GDP throughout NATO, have caused this rhetoric to also start shaping the debates on the future of defense in several European countries.
The reality is, however, that defense spending - and particularly in comparison to the GDP of member states - is simply not an appropriate measure of commitment and readiness in the context of NATO. The real matter at hand here, is military efficiency. One does not simply translate into the other. Over the course of history, and even throughout the world today, there are many examples of disproportions between actual defense spending and the level of military efficiency that is achieved by respective states. Just looking at the top countries in the world, in terms of defense spending as a percentage of GDP according to the World Bank, it becomes painfully obvious that these countries - Oman, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, the Republic of Congo - are not leaders in military efficiency. The United States itself, which without much argument can be considered the leading global military power, only floats around the 21st place in this worldwide ranking.
Sadly, simple data points such as defense budgets are much easier to comprehend and use in policy debates than more complex concepts such as military efficiency. Even at a debate among politicians and academics that I recently attended, the concept of military balance - between NATO as a whole and its potential opponents such as Russia and China - was grossly reduced to a basic comparison of defense budgets. While defense definitely has a cost, and there is a discussion to be had about just how many of its resources a state should attribute to that particular responsibility, the tunnel vision on the size of defense budgets as an indicator of military commitment or capabilities actually represents a slippery slope.
This approach to try and increase military capabilities suggests that the solution is simply throwing more cash at it. While this may be a simple and straightforward attempt at a solution, and one that could even be successful in some cases, it by no means offers any guarantees towards achieving the actual objective. Secondary to that, in this particular NATO case, there is also the reality that not all of the defense spending by member states contributes directly to those kind of capabilities or commitments that the United States are seeking from them. Just as is the case with the United States itself, the protection of the territorial integrity of NATO or even conducting interventions outside of NATO territory is only one of many missions carried by its military power. This means that just raising budgets wouldn’t necessarily even have any noticeable effect on commitment within NATO, and also that NATO policymakers should perhaps instead be much more concerned with the way in which countries invest their budgets - whether limited or extravagant - if what they want is a more capable alliance.
Among NATO member states, many defense budgets are disproportionately tilted towards covering personnel costs. This means that only smaller portions of the budget are available for acquiring or developing advanced equipment, training, or even actual operations. This is the consequence of budgetary constraints to a certain degree, but general defense policy cultures are at least as much responsible for this and make it difficult to scale military capabilities in accordance to available budget.
In addition to this, there are also many different capabilities that these elements of equipment, personnel, training and operations can be geared towards. NATO member states each maintain a volume of combat forces that generally correlates with their size or ability, but across NATO - and particularly among its European partners - there is a great shortage when it comes to specialized capabilities such as strategic and tactical airlift, intelligence platforms and even joint command capabilities. Past interventions in Libya and Mali have made these shortcomings painfully clear, and unlike the abstract value of defense budgets, these capability gaps have a very real effect on the way in which European NATO member states are able to perform as part of the alliance. In past operations, this reality has forces the United States in taking up a central role in any joint operations conducted by NATO, and without a significant expansion of those particular capabilities in Europe, the United States will not be able to escape that responsibility within NATO.
Despite these gaps in capabilities, the United States administration is calling for increased defense spending by its partners to allow member states to carry more weight in ongoing military operations. Of course, the decision making that goes into the commitment of forces is not only based on budgetary concerns, but many European member states have simply been more reluctant than others to actually deploy combat forces. Several times, NATO member states have opted to contribute in less risky forms, by providing support functions such as logistics, training or by limiting their engagement to less threatened air assets.
The challenge the United States faces in trying to accomplish actual “burden sharing” is not simply a budgetary challenge, but is actually based on a strong divergence in the perception of necessary engagement throughout NATO. The alliance still is a collection of sovereign states, and these states will limit their engagement based on their own individual needs and abilities. This is a fact that is bound to the very core of the alliance structure, as NATO was specifically intended not to take on the role of a supranational organism, and instead functions very much as a statement of intent, and a structure that allows permanent preparation for contingencies, but that is still very much slave to the interests of its individual members rather than the other way around.
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