September 7, 2021 | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Barry R Posen
September 7, 2021
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The US defense effort consumes roughly three-quarters of a trillion dollars per year and makes up a quarter of all Federal spending and half of all federal discretionary spending. Because resources are scarce relative to plausible projects and money is fungible, the defense effort should, like other federal spending, be subjected to close scrutiny. This is especially true today, given the extraordinary federal expenditures incurred to address the COVID-19 pandemic and the federal debt that funded them.
It is tempting to cut acquisition programs that have unusually high price tags, checkered development histories, or esoteric rationales, whenever one reviews the defense budget with an eye toward efficiency. One thinks currently of the F-35 tactical combat aircraft or the land-based ICBM modernization program dubbed the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. It is more difficult than one might think, however, to find enough such programs that are politically vulnerable to elimination to save a lot of money over a sustained period. At bottom, significant and sustained cuts, reallocation, or additions to US defense spending should be considered in light of US grand strategy—the political-military theory that we have of how to produce security for the country.[1] Here, I will argue for a strategic reconsideration of one major element of the US defense effort—the commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. I will show that major reforms in how the US fulfills its alliance commitment can save as much as $70 billion to $80 billion per year.
It is time for a true division of labor within the Atlantic alliance. A suggestive passage from the Biden administration’s new strategic concept points the way: “We will work with allies to share responsibilities equitably, while encouraging them to invest in their own comparative advantages against shared current and future threats.”[2] The comparative advantages that the United States brings to the alliance involve intelligence (on which it spends $80 billion a year), offensive nuclear forces (the tools of the much vaunted nuclear umbrella), and naval power (especially the most costly and complicated assets—nuclear attack submarines and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers). Europeans should specialize in missions in which they are inherently more efficient by reason of proximity to plausible military challenges—direct defense of European territory with ground and supporting tactical air forces. I have demonstrated elsewhere that they have adequate military personnel and ground and air combat units to fulfill this mission.[3]
A grand strategy is a political-military means-ends chain. It is a foreign policy establishment’s theory of how to create security for the country it leads and serves. Grand strategy assesses and prioritizes threats and opportunities. Priority is a particularly important concept. It is best to be very strong in those areas where analysis determines the threats to US strategic interests are greatest. Broadly speaking, the United States has since the start of World War II tried to ensure that there is no hegemonic power in control of all the resources of Europe, on the theory that such an agglomeration of resources could threaten the United States directly. First Nazi Germany and then the Soviet Union were sufficiently powerful to threaten the conquest of Europe. The United States applied the same logic in Asia, though the risk there of a successful hegemon waned with the defeat of imperial Japan and has only returned with the rise of China.
The threat of a hostile power controlling Europe is now very low, whether or not the United States remains committed to Europe’s defense. Cold War containment succeeded beyond the US foreign policy establishment’s wildest dreams. The Soviet Union was not only prevented from achieving hegemony in Europe; it collapsed. Russian power is considerably less than half of what the Soviet Union could muster. Meanwhile, the European powers shattered by World War II have recovered their economic vitality. The European Union—an admittedly unusual assembly of nation states—musters five to 10 times the economic power of Russia (depending on whether gross domestic product at purchasing power parity or at market exchange rates is the relevant comparison). The EU has three times Russia’s population. Indeed, the members of the European Union collectively outspend Russia on defense by a factor of three at market exchange rates.
If non-US NATO is the relative standard, Canada, Turkey, Norway, and the UK bring total non-US alliance military spending to $300 billion, nearly five times that of Russia. Even a purchasing power parity comparison, which would give Russia credit for the possibility that it may be buying its weapons and personnel at bargain prices, yields a two-to-one spending superiority in non-US NATO’s favor. One could argue on the basis of these figures, as I have done elsewhere, that Europeans should be left entirely to defend themselves.[4] Here I assert a less revolutionary but still strongly reformist position: Europeans can and must carry a much bigger share of the responsibility for their own defense.
The principal threat facing NATO Europe today is Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia inherited much of its military capability, which promptly atrophied due to the concomitant economic collapse. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has invested steadily in rebuilding its military capability, and today Russia is an imposing military power. Though much less capable than the preceding Soviet Union, Russia’s current nuclear and conventional forces are real. NATO thus faces the task of deterring both nuclear and non-nuclear threats. Though France and Britain both possess national nuclear capabilities, the alliance as a whole leans heavily on the United States for “extended nuclear deterrence.” The alliance also faces non-nuclear naval threats in the Black and Baltic Seas, and in the North Atlantic. Russian ground forces in Russia border NATO member states Estonia and Latvia, and—via the enclave of Kaliningrad—Lithuania and Poland. From a military point of view, NATO planners almost surely expect Russian ground forces would have easy access to Belarus during any conflict, which would further affect these NATO member states.
Though NATO’s plans for defense against a range of possible Russian threats are secret, it is clear from the present pattern of NATO exercises, from US military preparations, and from public information that the US military is expected to play a huge role in the direct defense of NATO European nations. In the event of a major Russian military mobilization along the borders of NATO nations, or in the event of an actual attack, large numbers of US naval, air, and ground forces would flow to Europe. US strategic nuclear forces would go on high alert. US nuclear attack submarines would surge into the Barents Sea to hunt, and if they find them, destroy Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines. Though the United States enjoys a comparative advantage in some of these missions, the Europeans could easily take up others. Given scarcity of resources, the US should insist they do so.