Value According to Whom?

I don’t expect you’ll read this report from CSIS in which they advocate assessing NATO partner contributions to the alliance by value rather than in dollars:

The CSIS study team ultimately arrives at four major conclusions about measures of European security investment:
• Given the state of analysis, and particularly the lack of data transparency across the alliance, it is difficult today to confidently measure states’ contributions to NATO.
• Meeting the goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense is an insufficient measure of security commitment and capability. The same is true for the threshold of spending 20 percent of defense resources on equipment. Both measures can send powerful signals of commitment to the alliance, but in some cases those signals may add more noise than clarity.
• A better approach is to build an array of metrics. Each metric examined in this report is helpful for better understanding how and where member states contribute, but they are strongest when considered together. Much useful data is collected by NATO but is not released publicly. NATO officials have suggested that the alliance collect a variety of useful data. Publicly released data, however, is scarce. Better data standards and improved data releasability would further expand the range of credible measures NATO could use to publicly communicate allied and partner contributions.
• In particular, there is a vital need for publicly available output measures of transatlantic security. NATO’s recent “Four 30s” initiative is a positive step in this direction. It sets a collective capability goal for the alliance of being able to deploy 30 battalions, 30 air squadrons, and 30 warships in 30 days. NATO should build on this initiative to inject more unclassified output measurement into its discussion of contributions. Priority output measures include deployability; sustainability; days on deployment; and fulfillment of NATO capability targets.

The study produces a variety of different metrics. Two things stand out from their metrics. None of them make Germany look good and none of them make the countries admitted to the alliance during the expansion rounds of the 90s and 00s look good and they look even worse from a cost-benefit standpoint.

In closing this post, let me suggest one simple rule of thumb for assessing the commitments of the partners. Which countries make NATO operations possible? In the history of the alliance has anyone ever said, “Gee, if we could only get Germany on board, we could do X”?