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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3688 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Does anybody else find The Atlantic's "If Trump Wins" issue hilarious? Just reading the titles and blurbs for some of those 24 pieces actually had me chuckling.

As a citizen of a small European country bordering Russia, I am a bit worried about the NATO part.

America's NATO ""allies"" fail to spend the agreed upon amounts on their militaries. They fail to meet their commitments and for some reason my American tax dollars are spent keeping them safe. The European "peace dividend" is me getting footed with the bill while they selfishly spend on social programs. Trump correctly called them out as failing to meet their commitments. His lack of politeness and poise has the benefit of him plainly stating the unpleasant truth.

I don't want Russia getting away with invading their neighbors. I don't want a return to 19th century and early warfare. I wish Europeans shared my attitude.

Europeans are by no means a homogeneous group. By "Europeans" you mean rich countries of Western Europe which are unlikely to be invaded and keep strong economic ties to Russia, like Germany, France, Italy or Spain (mainly Germany). But there is a bunch of CEE (short for Central and Eastern Europe) countries, like Romania, Poland and Baltic states which are fully aware of impending Russian danger and keep their military spending beyond the NATO threshold.

So we are in a position of conflicting interests. Western Europeans are reluctant to pay for the safety of their eastern neighbors, but they benefit largely from the stability given by the American umbrella. CEE countries want to fulfill their obligations, since they are in obvious risk, but stand little chance against Russia without NATO's help. Would you rather punish CEE countries for the misdeeds of their western friends, or give Germans free ride? Some statistics about NATO spending by country are here.

I don't want to punish anyone, but:

rich countries of Western Europe

...are the industrial foundation of European self-defense. 2% of German GDP pumping out tanks, 2% of (NATO newcomer) Sweden pumping out Saab anti-tank weapons, etc, etc. I'll give France a pass since they are at 1.9% GDP expenditure.

West Germany had over 7000 tanks circa the fall of the Soviet Union. Now they have around 200. There's talk of taking Cold War equipment out of museums and refurbishing it for use against Russia. This is an entirely self-inflicted problem.

It is the rich ones who will commit, or it is me in America footing the bill. Europe should be a fortress of industrial military might. With, as you correctly point out, even the poorer countries contributing what they can. But as of recently almost all NATO "allies" haven't been pulling their weight. Even Canada promises 2% and entirely fails to deliver. Too bad you CEE types are stuck with such a feckless band of supporters and an expansionist Russia.

We lacked incentives so far. Or rather, the incentives are stacked heavily against military spending.

With the US backing us up, Poland being a comfortable buffer state, Russia seemingly docile for decades and an important trading partner, our welfare state demanding an ever-increasing budget, and the Germans successfully indoctrinated into a pacifism that denies even the possibility of conflict, with us so far having gotten away with under-delivering on our NATO obligations, with our military-industrial complex being known far and wide as a pit of corruption and our armed forces as an ineffectual money-burning machine - what force on Earth could realistically have convinced the Germans to wish for more military spending?

It seems like a bad idea on so many levels to waste funds that are clearly needed for [insert favorite redistribution project] on something that we don't want, don't need, are bad at, which is going to backfire anyways as experience has proven either by wasting the money without effect or by making our politicians think that we can go on another adventure in Afghanistan or Mali or fuck-knows-where, and which we consider morally wrong.

I wish Germany had military strength commensurate with its economic stature, but frankly I don't see how that's going to come about within decades of now, and I also don't think throwing money at the problem will actually improve anything. Except for the defense industry's business, for what that's worth, and since I regretfully rejected a defense job in the past, I am now sour grapes on those guys and I don't think we should spend taxpayer money on them.

It's worth noting that there are reasons why American (and Anglo-French, but it has been the US that mattered since 1945) policy has historically discouraged Germany becoming a major military power. I agree with you that they no longer apply, but America allowing Germany to free-ride rather than rearm is inertia rather than stupidity.

Given who normally invades Russia, if Russia's invasion of Ukraine does lead to German rearmament, it will be the biggest national-security self-own since Pearl Harbor.

The war in Ukraine shook a few countries awake, but in 2014 only the US, UK, and Greece met the spending target. All other countries were content to free ride.

https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2023/07/03/defence-spending-sustaining-the-effort-in-the-long-term/index.html

Sure, but 2014 was precisely the year when the threshold was set, so I find your comment very misleading. This information is very plainly written in the link you have given and in the link I have given above.

During the 2014 summit, all NATO members agreed to spend at least 2% of their GDPs on defense by 2025. In 2017, only four nations met the threshold: The United States (3.6%), Greece (2.4%), the United Kingdom (2.1%), and Poland (2.0%). However, by 2021, ten countries were meeting the percentage target.

In this link you can find all the military spending of Poland as a percentage of GDP between 2014 and 2023. As you can easily see, from 2014 onward, Poland has been seriously trying to meet the spending target.

The original 2% agreement goes back to 2006

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm

Gonna be honest, I didn't read that part of the page. However, I think the key point is that the biggest defense spenders were the US, UK, and Greece. The US is the US, but the UK and Greece are not in any immediate danger of invasion.

Probably Greece spends so much because of constant tensions with many times bigger Turkey, and UK, well, has always been the enforcer of the European balance of power.

Probably Greece spends so much because of constant tensions with many times bigger Turkey, and UK, well, has always been the enforcer of the European balance of power.

Also the UK is committed to maintaining a blue-water navy, which implies a certain ongoing minimum spend even when there are no threats on the horizon - a blue-water navy isn't something you can spin up in a decade. The British army is vestigial, but the UK has a very long history of successfully keeping its military tradition intact when the army shrinks to a vestigial size during peacetime and rolling it out again when the army expands in wartime.

We tell the private who is made 2ic of a 4-man fireteam that we are teaching him leadership in case he has to take over the team after the corporal is shot, but the real reason is that he would be a platoon sergeant in charge of a toff and a soccer riot into a 2LT and a platoon if things kicked off.

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