Well, to be honest nearly all US presidents have brought up the clause that all NATO members have to expend 2% of their budget for the military. That is neither new, nor something that Trump made up. It even makes sense because if we look at the mess that the Bundeswehr is then even the old Spiegel magazine with it’s "bedingt abwehrbereit" articles from decades ago had no idea how low the standards and equipment of the german army could sink.
And "pacta sunt servanda" works both ways - by breaking the contract through not expending the promised amount of funds on military most european states have sacrificed their own ability to defend themselves AND their ability to come to the aid of their neighbours.
Way to miss my point. How many of the others threatened to leave countries alone if they didn't pay up?
Trump and you also appear to miss the part where the budget is far from the biggest problem of the Bundeswehr.
To reduce the problem to some one-dimensional "spend more money" is really silly when the army doesn't even use its entire budget because the industry just can't deliver and when the requirements for the gear are completely broken regarding its missions. Take the transport helicopters that can only land on very flat ground due to the low ground clearance or the Tiger that doesn't have a swivel gun and can barely hit the taliban with gun pods on the wings because we ordered a tank buster and wanted to save money on the gun.
Of course we could try to buy so many Tigers that they can fire so many gunpods that the bullet storm become inescapable, that would be one way to fix the issue...
And then maybe they can use the missiles to create a nice, flat glass parking lot for the transports to land on.
And besides, nobody forces the US to spend 4% of its GDP on defense, that is entirely their own choice to maintain force projection capabilities. If they can't defend us on a lower budget, maybe that would incentivize us to arm up by ourselves, but they want us to arm up to support their foreign adventures with more of our bullet sponges to make the adventures more palatable in the US.
We might just as well agree to a lower goal for all nations anyway.
According to that the British meet the 2% goal and I still heard lots of complaints about how they're ruining their navy.
And what exactly do we all need these large armies for anyway?
People like myself that complain do so because we anglophiles tend to see the hollowing out of the Royal Navy as a sad reflection of the UKs diminishing role in the world. For the purely NATO standpoint, the UK and France have long been the only NATO allies with navies capable of any force projection or long term sustainment at sea, having the UK give up that capability or let it erode means that for any NATO naval operation (like off the Somali coast) will take more US logistical support.
Though it sounds stupid, you need armies to keep a peace or to back up your positions. They don't need to be large, but they should at least be functional. The swiss haven't had to use their army in a long time but it's existence and it's being formidable enough kept it out of WWI and WWII. The Germans copying the the US model of logistics (based off the Walmart model) was supposed to save money which it does at the cost of equipment readiness. Not being allowed to stockpile parts means that maintenance shops have to wait for the ordering system to work back to depots and forward again meaning more downtime for even simple repairs.
In the longer term viewpoint, if Russia ever succeeds in the dissolution of NATO and the watering down of any collective EU defense then it's quite likely that they'd use outright force again to enforce political/economic disputes with their neighbors. As any student of history knows, building up an army does not happen quickly and any credible European military response to Russian aggression can't wait for the threat to become so real that public support demands it.
If the above seems unrealistic just think back how different to world was 30 years ago or 20 years ago. Things have gotten more peaceful for Europe but that is not irreversible. Remember, the strong tend to despise 'weakness' not respect it. Thankfully France has 'the bomb' so there is some independent deterrent (assuming the US abandons Europe again) within the EU following the departure of the UK.
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
-Abraham Lincoln
Four stage strategy from Yes, Minister:
Stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
People like myself that complain do so because we anglophiles tend to see the hollowing out of the Royal Navy as a sad reflection of the UKs diminishing role in the world. For the purely NATO standpoint, the UK and France have long been the only NATO allies with navies capable of any force projection or long term sustainment at sea, having the UK give up that capability or let it erode means that for any NATO naval operation (like off the Somali coast) will take more US logistical support.
Though it sounds stupid, you need armies to keep a peace or to back up your positions. They don't need to be large, but they should at least be functional. The swiss haven't had to use their army in a long time but it's existence and it's being formidable enough kept it out of WWI and WWII. The Germans copying the the US model of logistics (based off the Walmart model) was supposed to save money which it does at the cost of equipment readiness. Not being allowed to stockpile parts means that maintenance shops have to wait for the ordering system to work back to depots and forward again meaning more downtime for even simple repairs.
In the longer term viewpoint, if Russia ever succeeds in the dissolution of NATO and the watering down of any collective EU defense then it's quite likely that they'd use outright force again to enforce political/economic disputes with their neighbors. As any student of history knows, building up an army does not happen quickly and any credible European military response to Russian aggression can't wait for the threat to become so real that public support demands it.
If the above seems unrealistic just think back how different to world was 30 years ago or 20 years ago. Things have gotten more peaceful for Europe but that is not irreversible. Remember, the strong tend to despise 'weakness' not respect it. Thankfully France has 'the bomb' so there is some independent deterrent (assuming the US abandons Europe again) within the EU following the departure of the UK.
With the advent of Brexit, the UK's 2% may support a rather smaller military than previously. Efficiencies could have been sought with the UK and France specialising in different areas and forming a larger coherent joint force, but of course the UK has been busy burning bridges since June 2016.
With the advent of Brexit, the UK's 2% may support a rather smaller military than previously. Efficiencies could have been sought with the UK and France specialising in different areas and forming a larger coherent joint force, but of course the UK has been busy burning bridges since June 2016.
This could work in that the UK could have a force that is useful for what an island nation needs - a Navy and perhaps some Marines and all but disband the army completely and if France or others want to have a large army then we could work together. Perhaps then we might even manage to have planes for the lovely aircraft carriers and enough ships to form the accompanying fleet to use them for anything that is remotely dangerous.
And the greatest bonus is then the almost complete inability to get sucked into protracted military engagements in far flung places beyond some shoreline battery fire and perhaps establishing a beachhead.
An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind. Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
The question of obsolescence seems to have been settled. But the debate on burden-sharing continues unabated. In his roundabout way, President Trump has done a notable job of raising the issue of the adequacy of European NATO’s defense spending. Criticism has focused almost entirely on the level of investment by member countries—whether they are meeting the 2 percent commitment—with far less attention paid to their actual ability to defend themselves and their allies. All things considered, the 2 percent rule is a poor way to measure burden-sharing. It came about in part as a convenience, as this was the level of NATO Europe’s spending in 2002, when the target was first agreed upon. It is one of the few things that NATO reports externally. It is useful, if a little crude, but it has a few methodological flaws and takes us only so far. Even the wider concept of burden-sharing, the desire for members to “pay their fair share,” is inherently flawed, since it focuses on inputs rather than outputs.
To keep metrics simple, the public focus should be on inputs (spending) and outputs (capabilities measured in deployable, ready, sustainable forces). Productivity metrics—the efficiency and effectiveness with which inputs are converted to outputs—should be provided for the benefit of member nations. Burden-sharing can then appropriately focus not simply on what countries spend, but on the forces they provide to ensure the security of Europe and the North Atlantic, as the treaty originally intended.
1.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
[MY OPINION] The burden on European countries of holding membership in NATO, allowing American basing, and the indispensability to NATO/America of the same, is not accounted for in allegations of "unequal burden-sharing".
Finally, some argue that the United States’ status as a global power means that its defense spending is not directly comparable to that of other NATO members. Of nearly 200,000 US forces deployed overseas, just over 99,000 of them are deployed in Europe, suggesting that roughly half of US deployed forces (and by extension roughly half its spending) are dedicated to non-European missions.15 By that measure, the US contribution to NATO would not seem nearly so disproportionate.
2.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
The 2 percent figure dates to the 2002 Prague summit, when it was established as a non-binding target; it was reiterated in Riga in 2006. At the NATO 2014 summit in Wales, all states not meeting the target pledged to do so within the next decade (and states above 2 percent agreed to maintain that level). In the three years since the Wales summit, spending has started to move in the right direction, increasing by 1.8 percent in 2015, 3.3 percent in 2016, and a projected 4.3 percent this year.
To get to 2 percent, spending will need to increase by another $107 billion annually ($28 billion in Germany, $17 billion in Italy, $15 billion in Spain, $12 billion in Canada, $5 billion in France, and smaller sums elsewhere).
NATO members have committed to spending 20 percent of their annual defense expenditure on equipment
3.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
At the Riga summit in 2006, it introduced a target that NATO land forces be at least 40 percent deployable and 8 percent deployable on a sustained basis (raised to 50 percent and 10 percent in 2008).
The latest official figures from the EDA show that only 29 percent of EDA member forces are deployable, and less than 6 percent of them on a sustainable basis,19 with unofficial figures suggesting that fewer than 3 percent of European troops are deployable due to a lack of interoperability and equipment shortages.20
4.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
There is no shared understanding of what makes up defense spending. In its definition of “military expenditure,” NATO includes defense ministry budgets, expenditure for peacekeeping and humanitarian operations, and research and development costs. Significantly, it also includes pensions. For many states, military pensions represent a substantial proportion of their defense budget (in 2016, 33 percent of Belgium’s defense budget was spent on pensions, as was 24 percent of France’s and 17 percent of Germany’s). The trouble is that while pensions contribute to the 2 percent target, they do not contribute to a state’s fighting power.
5.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
For all of those problems, the 2 percent metric retains its appeal. It is simple, straightforward, and (relatively) easy to measure. Jan Techau, director of Carnegie Europe, argues that the 2 percent target is “flawed but indispensable” as a measure of “who is and who is not politically committed to NATO’s core task: Europe’s security.”
“Spending at 2 percent says very little about a country’s actual military capabilities; its readiness, deployability, and sustainability levels; and the quality of the force that it can field. It also is mum about a country’s willingness to deploy forces and take risks once those forces are deployed. It does not assess whether a country spends its limited resources wisely.”22
6.
The 1949 Strategic Concept called for this level of rigor: “A successful defense of the North Atlantic Treaty nations through maximum efficiency of their armed forces, with the minimum necessary expenditures of manpower, money and materials, is the goal of defense planning.”
ATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has recently suggested that member states publish plans detailing three elements: cash, capabilities, and commitments.
I propose a framework to meet the needs that NATO and others have identified.
A. Spend enough. NATO must measure and report total defense spending. A "real" percentage threshold - no pensions, no military aid, no intelligence spending...
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
This prompted the UK, in 2015, to add some £2.2 billion to its reported NATO figure by adding civilian and military pensions, contributions to UN peacekeeping missions, and a large portion of the Ministry of Defence’s income from other countries’ defense ministries to its reported figure.27 Although these inclusions were seen as legitimate, it seems likely that they do not contribute to the UK’s fighting power and should be removed from the NATO definition for all nations.
B. Spend it on the right things. NATO should measure and report what the money is spent on. The right mix of spending on personnel, operational costs, equipment, and R&D.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
“European defense spending has been consumed disproportionately by personnel and operational costs.”28 In fact, more than 50 percent of European spending goes to salaries and pensions. Roughly speaking, an optimal mix is no more than 40 percent on personnel and a quarter on major equipment. Yet NATO Europe forces spend only 15.2 percent of their budgets on equipment, versus a much healthier 25 percent in the United States (and 24.5 percent in France and 22.6 percent in the UK).29
The net result is that the US spends fully $127,000 on each soldier’s equipment, while NATO European members spend only one-fifth that amount, $25,200 per soldier
NATO should be measuring spending at a more granular level: military pay, civilian pay, major equipment acquisition, research and development, operations and maintenance, and infrastructure.
C. Spend it well. NATO should measure efficiency and effectiveness in each of these three categories: Personnel, Equipment, Operations & Maintenance.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Many forces waste precious resources, maintaining Cold War bureaucracies rather than prioritizing frontline forces. The people and infrastructure supporting the fighting force (the tail) has failed to shrink as fast as the fighting force itself (the tooth), resulting in an ever-deteriorating tooth-to-tail ratio (Exhibit 3). The force is at the same time too large, with too many non-deployable forces, and too small, with too few deployable fighting forces.
Compounding the problem of too few euros going to equipment, the purchasing power of European governments is dissipated by an inefficient industry structure. Alexander Mattelaer at the Institute for European Studies argues: “The present degree of fragmentation in the European defense markets and organizational structures virtually guarantees a poor return on investment.”30 McKinsey’s analysis shows 178 different weapon systems in service in Europe, versus 30 in the US.
Many forces have failed to spend enough to maintain what equipment they do have, and their overall maintenance productivity is low. In 2014, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen revealed major deficiencies in the operational capability of important German weapons systems. For example, only 42 of 109 Eurofighters, 38 of 89 Tornado fighters, and 4 of 22 Sea Lynx helicopters were ready for service, mostly due to a lack of spare parts.
Experience suggests that overall maintenance productivity is low.
D. Measure the outputs. NATO should measure capabilities and continue to measure the readiness, deployability, and sustainability of forces (and its will to use them).
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
During the Cold War, each NATO member had a commitment to a “self-defense plan” that specified a required force structure, a certain readiness level, and a deployability level for their forces. [...] Two critical and necessary steps to reform the notion of burden-sharing would be for NATO to craft an integrated defense plan, and for nations to commit to making force structure contributions to that plan, which they agree to fund.
[NATO] should take the next step and ask nations to publish the figures [on deployability of forces].
Finally, it would be useful to measure actual contributions to NATO missions as a measure of commitment to the alliance. Which nations are punching above their weight? Purely investment-related metrics have been a notoriously poor guide to predicting actual contributions to NATO missions. Denmark and a few other nations do not meet the 2 percent target, but when it comes to capabilities and contributions, they manage to outperform most other allies.
7. The US is not immune.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
...more than 20 percent of the DoD’s nearly $600 billion annual budget was dedicated to six back-office business processes (facilities management, HR, finance, logistics, acquisitions, and health management).
...the DoD has significant opportunity to improve its own tooth-to-tail ratio, focusing on achieving productivity gains in the back-office core business processes and support functions, and reinvesting the savings to fund mission needs.
Vitiate Man.
History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Any system that has KPIs invariably leads to everyone aiming for the KPI and ignoring the "bigger picture" of what the overarching purpose is for - what exactly in Europe is the military there to do, where is it going to achieve this and who is doing what? Point D really summarises this well - when there was a real concern that things might be required for use there was an attempt to ensure it was fit for purpose. For the last 25 years it has become more politicised with decisions based on non-military realities (aircraft carriers without planes, anyone?) Perhaps even going to the better countries such as Denmark and seeing if there are any things that can be learned from their approach - perhaps it might boil down to a less corrupt procurement procedure.
An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind. Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
Any system that has KPIs invariably leads to everyone aiming for the KPI and ignoring the "bigger picture" of what the overarching purpose is for - what exactly in Europe is the military there to do, where is it going to achieve this and who is doing what? Point D really summarises this well - when there was a real concern that things might be required for use there was an attempt to ensure it was fit for purpose. For the last 25 years it has become more politicised with decisions based on non-military realities (aircraft carriers without planes, anyone?) Perhaps even going to the better countries such as Denmark and seeing if there are any things that can be learned from their approach - perhaps it might boil down to a less corrupt procurement procedure.
The carriers weren't designed without planes in mind. They were designed with the F-35 in mind. The RN, trusting the US's estimates, scheduled the retirement of its Harriers to be replaced in short order by F-35s. The F-35 isn't ready because they've been delayed, but the carrier is because they've been less delayed. The USMC refused to put aside their still working Harriers until the F-35 was a working concern. So they still have planes for their carriers.
The lesson in this should be to assume that solutions aren't going to be perfect until they're shown to be so. Stick with the status quo until the changed situation has proven itself.
The carriers weren't designed without planes in mind. They were designed with the F-35 in mind. The RN, trusting the US's estimates, scheduled the retirement of its Harriers to be replaced in short order by F-35s. The F-35 isn't ready because they've been delayed, but the carrier is because they've been less delayed. The USMC refused to put aside their still working Harriers until the F-35 was a working concern. So they still have planes for their carriers.
The lesson in this should be to assume that solutions aren't going to be perfect until they're shown to be so. Stick with the status quo until the changed situation has proven itself.
Well retiring any system based on a supposed future fielding date of new equipment is always problematic, the Space Shuttle is a good example of the American version. We've been hitching rides with the Russians for far too long and the political/beauracatic moving of the goal posts keeps delaying it's replacement just like with the F-35. I personally think the Royal Navy should have gone for catapult launched aircraft which would have allowed it to field interim aircraft (like the F/A18, Rafale, or Sea Gripen) until their desire replacement was ready or at the very least kept their Harrier fleet around (the Italians and Spanish still fly Harriers from their aircraft carriers as well as the USMC).
what exactly in Europe is the military there to do, where is it going to achieve this and who is doing what?
That's certainly the first topic that needs to be taken up and one of the reasons an EU military is so unlikely. The French would certainly want the EU military to also work on the peripheries of Europe (the Med and Africa) while the Germans understandably don't want to leave the continent short of peacekeeping and limited support for NATO operations to fly the flag.
If either the French or Germans were to try and reorganize themselves for a credible challenge to Russia it would require a large investment into top tier military hardware, something both governments are unlikely to fund. Especially as the military is still culturally something to be despised (WW2, Algiera and Indochina).
Right now the European militaries/governments seem more geared toward just barely keeping their defense industry afloat in the pursuit of foreign military sales (Saudi Arabia, Turkey, India, Thailand, Brazil etc...).
At the very least more coastal patrol boats etc.. to help Frontex in it's overstrech in Greece, Italy and Spain would help curb the immigration issues that are being used to stoke far-right nationalism.
I don't advocate that they pursue a re-militarization to be on par with say South Korea, the threat from Russia isn't that impending but it should certainly be more than it is now. The Polish, the Baltic States, and Romania are now the front line states in Europe and should be given the assurances they need from the major EU powers. The Baltic air policing and rotation of training forces is okay for getting greater inter-operability but not the same as having defense policy that actually supports functional militaries.
Last edited by spmetla; 05-24-2018 at 19:10.
"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?"
-Abraham Lincoln
Four stage strategy from Yes, Minister:
Stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it's too late now.
The carriers weren't designed without planes in mind. They were designed with the F-35 in mind. The RN, trusting the US's estimates, scheduled the retirement of its Harriers to be replaced in short order by F-35s. The F-35 isn't ready because they've been delayed, but the carrier is because they've been less delayed. The USMC refused to put aside their still working Harriers until the F-35 was a working concern. So they still have planes for their carriers.
The lesson in this should be to assume that solutions aren't going to be perfect until they're shown to be so. Stick with the status quo until the changed situation has proven itself.
I am aware they were designed to have planes. In fact during the building of the aircraft carriers they changed the planes they were to use twice I believe.
No solution is ever perfect - and no created product ever is so if one is awaiting perfection one will never have anything, and sticking to the status quo would have soldiers in red uniforms and bearskin hats.
If this is stating the UK needs to admit it is a Tier 2 country and refocus most spending on off the shelf solutions and not cutting edge "solutions" I would agree; that still does not address what exactly the carriers can be used for without sufficient ships to form proper carrier groups.
An enemy that wishes to die for their country is the best sort to face - you both have the same aim in mind. Science flies you to the moon, religion flies you into buildings.
"If you can't trust the local kleptocrat whom you installed by force and prop up with billions of annual dollars, who can you trust?" Lemur
If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.
The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the average voter. Winston Churchill
Re: Future of the European Union
Originally Posted by ConjurerDragon
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks