The phrase "defensive alliance" is ambiguous. The rival meanings are not inherently incompatible. But in practise they tend in opposite directions. When the ambiguity is resolved some-one feels cheated.
To see the problem picture four countries, Timidland, Moralland, Weakland, and Aggroland. Timidland is spending more on defence than it wants to because it fears being attacked by Aggroland. Moralland is also spending more than it wants to on defence because it too fears attack by Aggroland. But the internal politics of Moralland are complicated. The moral thing to do is to build a larger army, attack Aggroland and liberate the people of Aggroland from the tyranny of the Chief Aggro. Or is that the moral thing to do? Isn't war bad?
Timidland and Moralland form an alliance. It is a "defensive alliance" meaning that Timidland will come to Moralland's aid if Aggroland attacks Moralland. But the people of Timidland are aware of the complicated internal politics of Moralland and it is explicit that if Moralland attacks Aggroland, then Moralland is on its own. Even instigating voids the alliance.
The problem arises because history isn't that neat. The 1914-1918 war starts with the Austro-Hungarian Empire giving an ultimatum to Serbia, Russia comes to Serbia's aid, Germany comes to Austria's aid, France and Britain have alliances to honour and end up fighting. If we want political theory to relate to the real world, we need to think about Moralland extending guarantees to Weakland.
Aggroland invades Weakland. Moralland supplies weapons to Weakland. And advisers. Eventually troops. Moralland artillery is shelling Aggroland invaders on Weakland soil from positions in Moralland. Counter battery fire from Aggrotroops in Weakland is hitting positions in Moralland. Does this trigger the defensive alliance and suck Timidland into the war?
Some Timidians argue that they never agreed to give guarantees to Weakland. Given the complicated history of the region, they would have refused to get involved if they had been asked. Others are saying that Moralland are the good guys. Of course Timidland must join the war. What use is a defensive alliance is you don't defend your allies? Peaceful Timidians feel that they have been out manoeuvred, and are being forced to honour guarantees to Weakland that they never made.
If Timidland is pulled into the war by the chains of the alliance, we can be more specific than calling it a defensive alliance. It was a "chaining alliance".
But what should we call a non-chaining alliance? I've picked the word "isolating". That is clearly wrong in theory. The terms of the alliance don't forbid Moralland from extending security guarantees to Weakland, they merely classify that as instigating; Moralland cannot call upon Timidland to help honour the guarantee.
But theory and practice disagree. The internal politics of Moralland has its guns-before-butter faction. They saw the alliance as a matter of building military strength, with a view to regime change in Aggroland, to save the world from the danger presented by the Chief Aggro. Moralland also has a butter-before-guns faction, that see the alliance as an opportunity to economise on defence spending, freeing up money for schools, hospitals, road, pensions, police, industrial policy, the climate emergency, tax cuts,... The list is endless. We see the likely outcome in Europe. NATO agrees that all members should spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. Most don't. The other priorities take precedence. In practice the non-chaining alliance leads to Moralland cutting defence spending. They are after all moral and pensioners deserve higher pensions, etc. The guns-before-butter faction are aghast to find that they have been out manoeuvred. They nearly had the army that they needed to protect Weakland from Aggroland. The alliance with Timidland was supposed to add to the army. In practise it subtracted. Moralland's own army has shrunk and Timidland's army is not available. The isolating alliance has left them isolated, unable to offer security guarantees to Weakland.
Obviously my fine distinction has contemporary resonances, but after World War Three reduces Europe and America to radioactive rubble, the run up to World War Four will involve China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Will they continue the tradition of talking about defensive alliances? Or will they embrace the distinction between chaining alliances and isolating alliances? I locate this essay in the British tradition of analytic philosophy, looking at words and attempting to resolve their ambiguities. Not all ambiguities; just those with large consequences.
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Notes -
Let's look at it from another angle. Why is NATO so obsessed with the 2% of GDP figure?
Never in human history has a country lost a war to an abstract ratio. They lose to brigades, warships and aircraft. Why is it that NATO insists on a budgetary commitment when what they need is a target for strength? They need to work out how many brigades are needed, how many reservists, submarines and so on to meet their needs.
When you actually look at the ratio of strength, you see that even European NATO alone is not threatened by Russia. Europe has more and better of everything except tactical and strategic nukes. The big European countries have fairly large, modern armies and a much larger overall population than Russia. The big countries alone have about 500,000 professional soldiers, ignoring the little ones. That's much more than Russia prewar. It's the same story at sea and in the air, probably even better for Europe there. At least 3:1 advantage for Europe alone, ignoring the US. And they have the advantage of being on the defence. Dean will of course come in with some galaxy-brained reasoning for why the Russian military juggernaut is really so much more powerful than the decadent NATO pigs, despite also being a pale shadow of its former glory and losing Putin's idiotic war in Ukraine - the worst strategic disaster for Russia since 1941. But for those of us who live in the real world where Ukraine is much weaker than the entirety of Europe, it stands to reason that Europe can defend itself from Russia.
Thus there is no defensive rationale in further conventional militarization. They could not lose to Russia in a conventional war, not if they were prepared to station forces in the Baltics. Given modern satellite surveillance they should be able to foresee a Russian invasion of the Baltics and move forces there to defend them. They should already have forces there if they want to defend them (and they do to some extent). Why offer NATO membership to the Baltics? It's strategically ridiculous, those countries have negligible military potential and bad geography. But if you look at it from the point of view of Lockheed and BAE, it's genius. They can create threatening stories about the Suwalki gap and sell more hardware. Diplomats and statesmen can feel important, prestigious and patriotic standing up to Russia.
Problems arise if Russia goes nuclear, since that's the one place Russia does have advantages. Given their conventional weakness, it makes sense to go nuclear, that's the TLDR of escalate-to-deescalate. They have something like 10:1 in tactical nukes against all of NATO and a large, modern strategic force. Britain and France can still get their warheads off and destroy much of Russia. The US can destroy all of Russia. But why would Britain and France accept megadeaths to ensure that Poland or Lithuania are immolated rather than having to bend over for Russia? It doesn't make much sense but it's possible - Britain has made huge sacrifices for Poland before. They don't even have permissive action links on their nuclear subs, British submarine commanders might execute their own foreign policy.
Why would Putin risk nuclear war with NATO over irrelevant countries like the Baltics, does he even want Poland? The whole scenario is very strange. But if we imagine that Putin is this evil megalomaniacal conqueror, what Europe needs is H-bombs. Tactical and strategic nukes would actually ward off Russia. We can have little doubt that Poland doesn't want to bend over for Russia and would use nuclear weapons to defend themselves.
Who doesn't want European nuclearization? The US and Russia. Nuclearization increases European strategic autonomy, it lessens US influence in Europe. It means that Europeans won't buy overpriced US hardware to suck up to America, that they won't feel the need to show up to wars that don't help them. It means that other countries around the world will nuclearize and lessen US strategic flexibility.
Who wants Ukraine to be in NATO? It has very little defensive utility. The Ukrainian military adds more mass to NATOs but NATO has plenty of mass already. It pushes Russia in the Black Sea. It puts NATO missiles closer to Russia. It raises tensions dramatically, Putin repeatedly warned this was a red line. Nobody's security is enhanced, least of all Ukraine's. But it does sell a lot of weapons!
The mainstream argument seems to be 'Europe needs to produce more weapons to give to Ukraine so they can fight Russia'. But why? Why does Ukraine fighting Russia advance European interests? It hurts European interests, Russia is Europe's natural energy supplier. It would be silly for Europe to attack Azerbaijan for assaulting Armenia or to fight America over Iraq's independence. Don't join wars that don't advance your interests. But when the experts have a chance at lucrative spots on the board of Raytheon, when the decisionmakers want to look strong and patriotic...
Precisely. This is why we shouldn't have antagonized him. Going after Russia's friends in Syria and blowing up Libya wasn't helpful, the whole Ukraine farce isn't helpful. We've spent a great deal of effort on making a dangerous enemy. They have thousands of H-bombs, missiles and all kinds of weapons that could make our lives a misery. Maybe they'll send the Houthis some exciting toys. From day 1 I pointed out that this was one of the many fruits of the poisoned tree and everyone goes 'oh let's keep planting the trees, it's so virtuous to eat poison, I love poison, you're unpatriotic if you aren't ready to chug down poison'.
Right now Putin's putting SMO veterans into positions of state power, he's ensuring that his successors toe the anti-Western line.
This was avoidable! If our statesmen had a little tact, if they knew how to spell diplomacy, if they had a basic understanding of strategy, we could've brought Russian neutrality, not pushed them into China's arms. We could've done nothing and won. But instead we've blown up random countries, ushered Ukraine into the slaughterhouse and given China a golden staircase to world hegemony.
There is nothing that South Korea can sell Poland that would change the outcome. Only H-bombs matter because Poland and co already have conventional superiority. Aren't you the one shouting that these disgusting subhuman orcs are so grossly incompetent? But for nuclear deterrence the Russians might just demand unconditional surrender. Raze a city every day until they surrender - you're the one who says they're so cruel. They don't think Poles are a fraternal people like Ukraine, they'd take the gloves off. Would France and Britain sacrifice their cities for Poland?
What is so hard to understand about my point?
Why you think it would work? With Russia what works well is exact opposite, note how Turkey reacted to Russia violating its air space (they shot down offending jet).
Not sure about specifics, but "just give Ukraine to Russia" would not really improve things here.
Because foreign guarantees worked so well in 1939. Poland is preparing to scenario where NATO if fucked up by Trump or in other similar scenario.
I have not really seen it in comment you are replying to and it does not match reality anyway.
See above, army beyond nuclear weapons are still useful in case where Russia is aggressive and evil but not genocidal, and on the low end where escalation to nuclear weapons is absurd (see invasion of Crimea).
Which one? That anyone buying weapons other than nuclear devices has gotten manipulated by Lockheed Martin? I think this one is quite absurd claim, notably in Ukraine almost any weapon except nuclear weapons and biological weapons, ICBMs and ASAT got used at this point. (though Russia got significant value from having nuclear weapons)
(OK, I am excluding chariots and other weapons not deployed by any military - though things like armoured trains were at least deployed)
So this is a very specific complaint I see levied constantly by people. Lockmart is viewed as negative here, positive on NCD.
But we really have to examine one thing: aside from really expensive big ticket items, US arms sales are actually quite in line with normal industry practices and not especially expensive when total lifecycle costs are accounted for.
For the purpose of discussion I will also include 'military aid' as sales, but offloading a shitload of truck beds and M113 hulls is a fancy amortization exercise as opposed to fulfilling a RFQ.
Anyways, US high price equipment and ordinance is the most expensive, because it is viewed as the best and actually fulfillable for order books. USA isn't selling howitzer shells, its selling expensive jets and harpoons. Overpriced? Find something better. Factor in parts availability and supply chain reliability, and it becomes clear that USA is the most reliable source of complex arms requiring long term upkeep. A MIG 29 is cheaper than an F16, but it craps out after 3 years and you even pre2022 you couldn't guarantee UAC was able to maintain, let alone upgrade, the platforms. Astros circular error of probability is shit compared to HIMARs even without GPS guidance, Silkworms are not compatible with legacy mounts on warships fitted For But Not With and their operational history is spotty anyways.
For anything in the same capability sphere, US arms compete at a similar playing field to European ones. For stuff that is considered overpriced relative to capability, competitors absolutely demolish US arms. Insitu sales are dropping dead while Bayraktar and Harop continues to gain traction. The right arm of the free world was the FN FAL, not the AR15. European battle taxis dominate the tracked/wheeled space, and the competitors are South Americans and Koreans, not the USA.
If one main argument against NATO is that it is an exercise in USA forcing everyone to buy its shit and therefore demonstrates US self interest, then the argument falls flat. US arms, then and now, are valued on a cogent basis for the most part. Individual systems may win or lose due to whatever backroom deals are conducted, but corrupt militaries never buy US arms, they either get "gifted" desert camo US military "aid" or just buy rebranded local shit.
Also, note that following are quite prone to costs ballooning:
Things like modern jets are triggering all of these, and often few more.
I bet that large part of that is caused by people supporting Russia (or hating on USA) being present here in at least some number, and being below Lizardman constant on NCD.
Oh man believe me I am EXTREMELY aware of indigenization being the most difficult component of adaptation, causing small run of (unnecessarily) tailored stuff. And then whichever bureaucrat signed off on the project 3 years ago get promoted somewhere else and the new guy comes in with at minimum a review and probably a few 'minor' ideas that add years to procurement. I've got a friend who realistically thinks he can send his unborn kid to college off a single vessel FFNW exercise.
Also, reee at NCD not having any lizardmen. /k has a better claim to sanity and humanity than the grunting planefuckers on NCD.
Oh, NCD is 50% lizardmen by volume. Sadly, they got stupider and less interesting as NCD got popular.
Just that "I love Putin" confusion is really rare there and basically extinct, even in ironic or satire form - and below lizardman levels.
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