Columbus, Ohio • Oct 26, 2014 • 43° Clear
Cuts in U.S., European defense spending stir fears
By Jack Torry & Katharina Fiedler
The Columbus Dispatch • Saturday October 25, 2014 10:14 PM
WASHINGTON — With Russia asserting itself in Ukraine and the Baltic States and the U.S. and its allies embroiled in conflict against Islamic State militants, there is mounting concern among defense analysts that the U.S. and western Europe should not continue to reduce defense spending.
Unless President Barack Obama and Congress abruptly reverse course, the U.S. defense budget is scheduled to absorb automatic reductions, known as the sequester, of nearly $500 billion from what the Pentagon had planned to spend during the next decade.
“You can’t expect to defend the nation under sequestration,” Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense in the Obama administration, told a gathering of defense analysts last week. “The risks are real, they are accumulating, and they are substantial. The risks associated with sequestration are not front-loaded, they are accumulative.”
At the same conference, Eric Edelman, who served as a diplomat and defense official for both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, warned that if the U.S. and western Europe encountered a Russian challenge in the Baltics, he doubted that the Pentagon “today or in the future would be able to provide really robust options for the president.”
Those reductions are taking place at a time when America’s major allies are hesitating to increase their own defense spending. The German defense ministry reports that it cannot even meet its current obligations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance of 28 countries that dates to the dawn of the Cold War.
Two of the recent U.S. defense secretaries — Chuck Hagel and Robert Gates — have both assailed western Europe for not keeping pace with U.S. military spending, with Hagel saying in May that “NATO members must demonstrate that they are as committed to this alliance as its founding members were who built it 65 years ago.”
Loren Thompson, a defense analyst at the Lexington Institute in Washington, said, “The majority of political experts in Washington think that the Europeans in NATO need to spend more on defense” — as high as 2 percent of their gross domestic product.
Germany spends just 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. By contrast, France spends 2.2 percent of its GDP on defense, while Great Britain spends 2.3 percent and the U.S. spends 3.8 percent.
The blend of declining U.S. defense spending and western Europe’s reluctance to modernize comes at a time when U.S. voters are increasingly interested in national security. A USA Today/Pew Research Poll in August showed that 53 percent of Americans see Russia as a major threat, compared with 32 percent in a similar poll last year.
But critics suggest the fears are overblown. Under any budgetary scenario, the United States will remain the world’s greatest military power, with annual military spending exceeding $600 billion through 2021. America’s B-2 bombers, F-22 fighter jets and Virginia class nuclear submarines outclass any weapons in the Russian or Chinese arsenal.
The U.S. maintains 10 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, 100,000-ton ships equipped with 90 jets and helicopters that can project military power all around the globe. By contrast, China has commissioned just one 53,000-ton carrier, while Russia’s only carrier was commissioned in 1990.
“We may complain that our allies are not spending enough, but when you add what (the U.S. and NATO spends), we are far ahead of any potential enemies,” said Daniel Wirls, a professor of political science at the University of California-Santa Cruz.
“You can look at any chart produced by the Department of Defense itself, which takes in account spending adjusted for inflation, and we are still at very high levels historically,” Wirls said. “The question is what are we doing with this? If you are having trouble operating with that amount of money, what are you doing with that money?”
The Pentagon’s budget is under pressure because federal deficits remain at dangerously high levels. Even with the sequester, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the government will add $7.1 trillion to its publicly held debt by 2024.
Yet the U.S. and its allies face challenges unanticipated just a few years ago. Not only have Islamic State militants occupied large swaths of Iraq and Syria, but forces have been rushed to western Africa to combat Ebola.
Just last week, a Russian surveillance plane entered the airspace of the tiny Baltic country of Estonia while Swedish naval ships have searched its waters for a suspected Russian submarine. Earlier this year, Russian troops were at work in Crimea in Ukraine.
There are signs that Congress wants to modify the defense reductions. Rep. Mike Turner, R-Dayton, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said that Obama and Congress have called for a “reversal of the sequester.”
“There is no agreement on how to accomplish that, which is a difficult process which will occur next year,” Turner said. “(But) Vladimir Putin has solved the sequestration problem for us because he has proven that ground forces are needed to deter Russian aggression.”
NATO’s lower defense spending also irritates U.S. lawmakers.
“Europe has to step up to the plate,” Turner said. “They cannot send the bill for their defense to the United States.”
Even though Russia’s border is only 400 miles from Germany’s eastern border and both Sweden and Estonia are part of NATO, military spending remains unpopular in Europe, especially in Germany.
Analysts say that German skepticism of military spending is fueled in part by the horror of World War II, which devastated every major German city, but also the experience of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“In Germany there exists a strong preference to solve conflicts not through military but rather with diplomatic instruments, culture and reconciliation,” said Christian Tuschhoff, a professor of political science at the Free University in Berlin. “Since 1949, all main German foreign-policy goals — including unification — have been achieved by diplomacy, not force.”
“Germany has carried around this guilt with them — ‘We can’t trust ourselves to project force because of the history against us,’” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald said.
“At some point, you can use that as an excuse not to spend money as well,” he said. “Germany wants to have a seat on the United Nations Security Council. But if you want to have a global impact, you have to act like it.”
Although German officials have indicated they want to adopt a more international presence, German Chancellor Angela Merkel last month appeared to rule out any increases in military spending. And as the last big recession revealed, Germany plays an increasingly important role in Europe.
“If U.S. officials are too demanding and too insulting, it can backfire,” warned Thompson, the Lexington Institute defense analyst. “Their complaints about Europe’s defense spending can cause resentment.”
He added, “Most Americans have no idea how much Europe is spending. Most voters would have been challenged to find Europe on a map or tell what the letters in NATO stands for.”
