Defense Spending by NATO and Middle East allies will be a central theme of President Donald Trump’s inaugural international tour since taking office.
Trump on Friday will fly to Saudi Arabia, then on to Israel, Rome, and Brussels for a meeting of NATO leaders, and then back to Italy for a meeting of the G-7.
In Saudi Arabia and Israel, Trump is expected to reaffirm alliances and discuss the potential for foreign military sales. During his brief European tour, he likely will continue the ongoing push to coax NATO member states into spending more on defense, according to Anthony Cordesman, the Arleigh Burke chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
At a May 15 forum discussing Trump’s first overseas trip, Cordesman said the president should abandon his insistence on allies increasing defense spending for spending’s sake.
“I would have to say that we would all be better off if the president focused on the quality and meaning of what spending accomplishes rather than spending,” Cordesman said. “I only have about half a century of government experience, but I can’t think of a worse criteria than actually encouraging people to spend without tying it to very specific goals as to what you buy and the level of efficiency in the way you use the money.”
Since the 2016 presidential campaign Trump has repeatedly harped on the need for NATO member states to shoulder more of the burden of collective security.
Multiple times Trump brought into question the U.S. commitment to its Article 5 commitment that an attack on one NATO state is an attack on all. He also infamously called the alliance “obsolete” because of a perceived inability to confront international terrorism, a claim he has since reversed.
A statement outlining Trump’s trip says at the NATO meeting in Brussels he will “reaffirm America’s commitment to the Alliance, while stressing the need for members to pay their share, and for the institution to continue on a path of reform.”
Jeffrey Rathke, senior fellow and deputy director of CSIS’ Europe Program, said Trump certainly will bring up the pledge by NATO members to spend at least 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) on defense by 2024 and to spend at least 20 percent of that sum on new equipment and modernization.
“Over the last year or two, NATO has made progress on this,” Rathke said. Keep in mind the target date for achieving that is out in the future, 2024, because, frankly, a rapid rise in spending by major countries has a major risk of inefficient spending, of wasteful spending. It takes time to, you know, do this rationally and efficiently. So you expect to see that upward trajectory continue.”
Defense spending by NATO countries rose by 3.8 percent overall in 2016, or about $10 billion more funneled toward national defense by all nations, Rathke said. So far 10 countries meet the 20 percent modernization goal and several are on their way to that mark. Five countries spend 2 percent of their GDP annually on defense with Romania set to meet the benchmark this year. Latvia and Lithuania will hit it next year, he said.
Germany, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands all increased military budgets in 2017 while Spain was flat but not decreasing. Rathke was careful to point out that those figures are national defense spending for each NATO member state and not funds paid into or owed to NATO.
Trump has suggested that NATO states that have not met the 2 percent of GDP goal are somehow in debt to the U.S. There is only a small shared pot of funds into which member states pay for NATO administration and no state is obligated to fund collective defense or owed anything from other members of the alliance.
“This is what countries spend on their own defense and those capabilities that they make available to NATO,” Rathke said. “This is not paid to the United States in any sense. There is no such thing as arrears at NATO or debts owed for past years.”
The shared pool of NATO funding runs about $2 billion per year to cover infrastructure and civilian personnel, Rathke said. Overall defense spending by member states in 2016 was about $920 billion, “so NATO’s commonly funded spending is very small by comparison,” Rathke said.
In the Middle East, Trump is likely to announce a major arms sale to Saudi Arabia, Cordesman said.
“It is likely that you will hear that there will be a major announcement on arms sales,” he said. “Some people have floated figures of 100 billion (dollars). I would give you all a caution, if you haven’t worked these issues before, that first people always give you the figure which is the highest goal. Most of the time it isn’t reached.”
Rathke reminded the audience that U.S. defense spending still dwarfs that of allies and adversaries alike. Saudi Arabia’s annual defense budget is about $57 billion, just $2 billion less than Russia spends on its military in a year, he said.
“That’s one-tenth of the American total,” Rathke said.
For comparison, in 2016, France spent $47 billion, the U.K. spent $53 billion and Germany spent $38 billion.