
NATO
Secretary-General
Anders Fogh Rasmussen
sounded the alarm last week in a visit to Washington. "I see
Crimea as an element in a greater pattern" of Russian strategy, he told
an audience at the Brookings Institution. Moscow's annexation of Crimea,
he said, is "a wake-up call" that "must be followed by increased
European investment in defense." He might have included the U.S.
The combined GDP of NATO's 28 member states
tops $30 trillion. Yet with few exceptions, most notably Poland, NATO
defense expenditures have declined since the end of the Cold War. The
nearby table shows the relative defense spending in 2013 for some key
NATO countries as a share of GDP. Only four members—the U.S., U.K.,
Greece and Estonia—spent at least 2% of GDP on defense.
At
1.9%, France last year fell short of the 2% that is supposed to be the
technical requirement for membership. Mr. Rasmussen's Denmark spent 1.4%
of its GDP on defense,
Angela Merkel's
Germany 1.3%, Italy 1.2%, and Spain 0.9%. This is what a country spends if it thinks its main security threat is Belgium.
And
the trend is down, as a majority of NATO members reduced defense
spending in 2013. Among the more drastic defense cutters last year were
Canada (7.6%), Slovenia (8.7%), Italy (10.3%), Hungary (11.9%) and Spain
(11.9%).
The U.S. reduced its overall
spending by an estimated 2%. That might not sound like much, but
American spending comprised 72% of all NATO defense expenditures in
2013. Under President
Obama's
latest budget proposal, U.S. defense spending will fall from 4.6%
of GDP in 2011 to 3.5% in fiscal 2015 and 2.9% by 2017 when he is
supposed to leave his successor a country stronger than he inherited. On
present trend it will be weaker.
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