In the era of tightening budgets, most European states are making hefty cuts to their military budgets, forcing Europe to reassess its role within NATO—and raising questions about the future of the alliance.
Except for two small countries, Denmark and Slovenia, in 2010 every European member of NATO cut their military expenditures (some like Bulgaria by nearly 40 percent), according to the Center for European Reform.
Budget restrictions amid the economic crisis have intensified a trend that began at the end of the Cold War in 1989. At that time, European NATO members spent on average 3.7 percent of their GDP on defense. By 2011, that has dropped to 1.7 percent. Only Greece and Great Britain currently spend more than 2 percent.
On July 1, Germany ended its military conscription, after 55 years, mostly for budgetary reasons. Germany’s Bundeswehr will now turn into a voluntary army that is smaller and cheaper, following the practice of most other European states.
During the Cold War, the biggest threats facing European countries came from European neighbors on the other side of the iron curtain. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the EU (and before it the European Community) as well as NATO underwent an eastward expansion. Since then, 15 countries have joined the EU and 12 have joined NATO, mostly from Eastern Europe. While not quite functional yet, the EU has also been working on a joint European defense policy.
NATO now has 28 member states, which include the United States, Canada, and 26 European countries.
The United States spent 4.7 percent of its GDP, or $530 billion, on defense in 2010. America has been increasing its defense budget since the late 1990s, especially post-9/11. The Department of Defense requested a budget for 2012 $22 billion higher than what it spent in 2010.
This trend sparked a frank reaction from Robert Gates, who retired as secretary of defense in June after five years of service under two presidents. In his final policy address in Brussels, he warned of a “dismal future” for NATO, if the burden is not shared more equally.
Gates spoke of a “two-tiered alliance ... between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership.”
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NATO’s Identity Crisis
NATO discovered an additional task of conflict prevention with the bombing campaign against the Serbian army during the Kosovo war in 1999, the first broad-scale military engagement of the alliance. The Sept. 11 attacks then provoked for the first time the invocation of its collective defense article, and it shaped NATO into the “primary force in the war on terror.”
Currently, its main focuses are combat operations in Afghanistan against the Taliban, since it took over command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in 2003, and the enforcement of the no-fly zone over Libya since March.
Feffer can understand the frustration on the American side since Washington clearly shoulders most of the burden within the alliance.
For example, for the ISAF mission in Afghanistan, the United States supplies 90,000 of its 132,000 troops.
Regularly at multilateral meetings, the United States has requested its allies to carry more of the load. In Libya, Washington was eager to hand over operations to NATO command, after the United States took a lead role at the start of the campaign. Now there are disagreements over the fact that half of NATO members don’t contribute to the intervention; and Germany’s decision to abstain from the Security Council resolution authorizing the no-fly zone back in March had upset Washington.
However, Feffer points out while Europe spends less on its military than the United States in terms of percentage of GDP in relative terms, it still spends “an enormous amount of money” in absolute terms. The $275 billion spent in 2010, makes Europe collectively the second largest military spender in the world, nearly four times greater than China, which had a defense budget of $78 billion in 2010.
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, acknowledges in a piece in the current edition of Foreign Affairs, that Europe needs to take more responsibility since the United States faces its own budgetary challenges. He warns that “if European defense spending cuts continue, Europe’s ability to be a stabilizing force even in its neighborhood will rapidly disappear.“
Joshua Spero, associate professor of political science at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts, says NATO has “expanded its membership and expanded its military missions without expanding its resources and its finances to support those efforts.”
Breaking Point?
Spero shares Gates’s assessment about the fragility of the alliance at this point. “Unless that [decline in spending] is reversed and the missions are limited, I am afraid the alliance might break and become ineffective.”
Henning Riecke, a fellow with the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), points to the mission in Libya as revealing European limitations. In June, for example, six Danish fighter jets ran out of bombs, and had to ask the Netherlands for assistance.
Riecke identified not just military expenditures, but a different political culture as reasons for the tensions within the alliance. “The Americans, much stronger than the European allies, have their own role as a superpower in mind, while they take the ability for global power projection much more seriously.” Europeans are “more strongly focused on their own continent,” he says.
Feffer thinks the disagreements about military contributions within NATO will bring about a “necessary reckoning” on budget priorities. He says the debate is not simply between Europe and the United States, but also between the hawks and the doves within NATO, between those who see a good reason to maintain a high level of military spending and those that see that “at a time of budget crisis it is necessary to make cuts in unnecessary programs.”
Rasmussen also talked about this in his recent article saying that given the economic climate in Europe, it is unlikely any EU government will start increasing defense spending. “Thus, the way forward lies not in spending more but in spending better,” he wrote, giving examples such as looking at multinational approaches, becoming more strategically oriented, and working with emerging powers.
Although Rasmussen, as secretary-general, affirmed the continued importance of NATO, Feffer thinks that behind the current tensions is a resurgence of NATO’s “identity crisis,” particularly with the waning of the “war on terror” and the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The analyst says there is a “profound fear from the United States that Europe will no longer see significant value in NATO because its mission is not any longer clearly defined.”
This may put the United States in a position where it may have to accept whatever Europe is ready to offer. “This kind of dispute between what the United States wants in the real world and what Europe provides in the real world will get sharper and it won’t go away,” says Feffer. “The United States has ultimately ... to accept what Europe does.”
