I noticed two things in the Wall Street Journal editorial, lauding NATO members for increasing their defense spending to 2% of GDP:
Some 23 of 32 NATO member countries are on track to spend at least 2% of their economy on national defense in 2024. That’s up from a mere six in 2018 and three in 2014, when members agreed to the 2% floor.
No surprise that the countries spending most are those that understand the Russian threat from painful experience. Poland is spending 4.12% of its economy, with half of its expenditure on equipment. Estonia and Latvia are above 3%. The doughty Finns, one of the alliance’s newest members, sit at 2.41%.
But even Germany, France and the Netherlands are on track to squeak above 2% in 2024. Ditto for Albania and Montenegro. The prize for embarrassment goes to Canada, which is wealthy enough to devote more than a mere 1.37% to defense. Spain is a more predictable but still deplorable low at 1.28%. Both countries should be told to meet their burdens or they’ll be replaced as members by better allies.
The first is that nearly a third of NATO members, including, as the editors mention, Canada and Spain, are spending less than 2%.
The second is that the words “readiness”, “preparedness”, or “fitness” do not appear at all in the editorial. Let me explain.
Imagine that you decided 30 years ago that you need to spend 2% of your income on home maintenance to keep your house up and then for the next 30 years you spend 1% or less. Unless your income is a lot more than mine that means you wouldn’t be able to replace the roof, repair the floors, repair the foundation, paint the hour, or do anything substantial with the plumbing, electric, or HVAC. After 30 years of neglect I daresay the house would be in falling down condition. If at that point you step up and start spending 2% on home maintenance, how long would it take you to put the house in livable condition?
That’s the situation that NATO is in. As of 20 years ago the only NATO members with militaries at the highest levels of readiness were the United States, France, and Britain and, sadly, France and Britain have not kept their military readiness up. What level of readiness will “squeaking above 2% in 2024” achieve?
I dont know. What does our military say about their readiness? One could note that we have spent a lot more but also used a lot more stuff while most fo those European countries haven’t been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Steve
The Russo-Ukrainian is reprise of the Western Front in WW I, except the front in Ukraine is much longer, 900 km vs. 600 km, and the armies are very much smaller. But still it is an attrition war of artillery barrages and infantry attacking fortified positions. The really new elements are the drones and satellites, which make surprise impossible.
The Ukrainians are currently losing 2,000 dead and wounded per day. Because it is an artillery war, and Russia has very much more artillery and rockets, Russian losses are almost certainly less, but substantial. These are Western Front level casualties.
The US-NATO alliance is simply incapable of this kind of war, especially since it is on Russia’s border and 5,000 miles from the US. The alliance has neither the manpower, nor the stomach for heavy losses, nor the industrial base needed, nor the logistical capacity needed.
The war policy of the US is wantonly reckless. The incident yesterday where an American ATACM released cluster bombs on people on a beach near Sevastopol has unleashed a firestorm of rage among the Russian people, and Putin may be forced to raise the war to anther level. The rockets were evidently intended to hit a nearby Russian airbase, but Russians want American blood, especially spilled in the USA.
A large scale European war is imminent, probably by fall. Every leader in the West, except Orban, is pushing for war. It will of necessity spread to the Pacific, where Russia and the US share a common border in the Bering Sea. Palin was right. You can see Russia from America, at least mountain top to mountain top.
European (and American) leadership was much better, smarter, better educated than today’s Western leaders, and they were trying to avoid war in both 1914 and 1939, yet they failed. Biden, Sunak, Macron, Scholtz et al. aren’t even trying.