EUROPEAN CONVENTIONAL MILITARY CONTRIBUTIONS
* The facts below are taken directly from the Atlantic Council's NATO's Value to the United States.
After decades of decline, European defense spending is once again on the rise. The United States has encouraged this development across several administrations.
Non-U.S. NATO defense spending was about $300 billion in 2017 (using constant 2010 dollars), or about 1.45 percent of GDP. Non-U.S. NATO defense spending has increased by $28 billion since the low point in 2014. Total European NATO defense spending is still less than half of US defense-spending levels, but the negative trend has turned. Unlike Europe’s, the U.S. defense budget is designed for global defense, and is distributed across at least three theaters of operation. Europeans have committed to increasing their defense budgets to 2 percent of GDP by 2024. That process has already started, especially in the East. Non-U.S. NATO defense spending increased by 3.08 percent in 2016 and 4.87 percent in 2017. About half of the NATO nations now have plans to meet the 2 percent of GDP defense-spending goal by 2024. If the overall pledge of 2 percent of GDP is maintained, European and Canadian defense spending should increase in the range of $89–$99 billion annually by 2024 (depending upon the base-year calculations used). Continued vigilance will be needed, because key countries, like Germany, have not yet developed internal plans to meet this goal by 2024. Those annual increases above the 2014–16 levels would place the total non-U.S. NATO defense budget near the $400 billion range by 2024. This is not unprecedented. Between 1970 and 1980, European defense spending rose by about $80 billion (in constant 2011 dollars). NATO is making headway on its goal of spending 20 percent of each national defense budget on equipment and research. Thirteen members are projected to hit this 20-percent goal soon, with four more at 19 percent. Only seven members met this target in 2014.
In addition to rising defense spending, it is important to note the considerable military power that European allies can bring to bear in concert with the United States.
Non-U.S. NATO countries have an estimated 1,857,000 active-duty military personnel and 1,232,290 reserve personnel. The seven European NATO members with the largest active-duty forces, combined, have a force of about 1.3 million personnel — roughly equal to the size of the US active-duty force. Together, these non-U.S. NATO countries hold about 6,983 main battle tanks (MBTs) and more than thirty-four thousand other armored vehicles. Air assets include about 2,612 combat-capable aircraft and 382 attack helicopters. Approximately 252 major naval craft, including submarines, exist within the non-U.S. NATO force structure, in addition to 1,583 patrol and surface combatants. France and the UK both operate aircraft carriers. European forces are working toward the following NATO deployability and sustainability goals: 50 percent and 10 percent for land forces, 40 percent and 8 percent for air forces, and 80 percent and 27 percent for maritime forces. The current state of alliance military readiness is not ideal, but the United States is suggesting readiness initiatives that would improve that situation.
NATO and its member-nation forces are not sitting idly by. During the recent past, NATO has had a number of out-of-area operations underway, with several either initiated by the United States or in direct support of U.S. security interests.
NATO currently conducts five active missions, with more than eighteen thousand troops deployed. Since the end of the Cold War it has successfully terminated another thirteen operations. Two terminated missions were on U.S. territory (Hurricane Katrina relief and early-warning AWACS flights after 9/11). In 2011, for example, U.S. NATO allies contributed more than thirty-eight thousand troops to International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) operations in Afghanistan. That was nearly half the number of troops committed at that time by the United States. Europe has stood by the United States in the ISAF operation for a decade and a half, contributing roughly the same proportion of troops. Given that ISAF originated with an Article 5 commitment initiated on the United States’ behalf, this has been a major European commitment over that period of time. The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) has estimated than it costs the United States about $1.3 million to keep a U.S. service member in Afghanistan for a year. Europe’s thirty-eight-thousand-troop contribution in 2011, therefore, saved the United States billions of dollars in 2011 alone. The number of Europeans killed serving in the U.S.-led Afghanistan operation totaled more than one thousand. A 2015 RAND report on Unified Protector (NATO’s operation in Libya) stated: “By the first week or so of Operation Unified Protector (OUP), the combined commitments of the various non-U.S. allied air forces grew to approximately 120 to 130 fighter, 13 air refueling, and 20–25 support aircraft. By that time, U.S. air units were conducting air patrol and strike sorties only on an exceptional basis. Most deployed USAFE units were returning or preparing to return to their home fields. The NATO fact sheet reports 260 aircraft were involved in OUP. In that case, the non-U.S. commitment to OUP would have been about 60 percent of the general effort and much more than that of the fighter effort.” Operation Ocean Shield (2009–2015) was a NATO counter-piracy operation conducted together with the European Union (EU), the United States, and other nations. Operation Ocean Shield was commanded by the following European nationalities: Denmark and Spain (2014), Norway and Italy (2013), the Netherlands and Turkey (2012), Italy and the Netherlands (2011), Denmark and the UK (2010), and Portugal and the UK (2009). All NATO nations, and now the alliance itself, are part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). They have provided strike missions, training, logistics support, some ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and special-operations forces (SOF). Non-US coalition partners have flown about one-third of all airstrikes against ISIS targets. Countries that have flown strike missions with the United States include: France, the UK, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Turkey. Germany, Italy, and Poland fly reconnaissance missions. NATO AWACS also provided ISR for the operation. Non-U.S. NATO members are currently conducting sixteen missions or operations under EU auspices. Another eighteen have been completed. These are missions that the United States’ European partners can conduct without US participation, and which relieve the United States of those burdens. During the past three years, NATO has adapted to meet new Russian threats by creating the Very High Ready Joint Task Force (VJTF), enlarging and readying the NATO Response Force (NRF), creating NATO Force Integration Units (NFIUs) to integrate forward-deploying forces, and forward deploying four NATO multinational battle groups. NATO has continued to adapt to the changing strategic climate, in part, by creating twenty-four Centers of Excellence over time. These centers focus on new and difficult challenges such as: cyber defense; strategic communications; chemical, biological, radiation, and nuclear (CBRN) defense; defense against terrorism; countering improvised explosive devices (IED); and energy security. In September 2017, a new NATO-EU Center of Excellence for hybrid warfare was created in Helsinki.
The United States’ NATO membership and deep bilateral relationship with European allies also provide the United States access to forward bases close to global hotspots. This ameliorates one enduring U.S. strategic challenge: the time it takes to respond to a crisis from the continental United States.
In 2016, the United States had twenty-eight main operating bases in EUCOM (sixteen army, eight air force, four navy). In particular, bases in Germany are important to deter Russia, bases in Turkey are important for Middle East operations like those countering ISIS, and bases in Italy and Spain serve a similar function for North Africa. The costs of U.S. overseas presence in general are small, relative to the cost of maintaining the overall force. For example, the costs of maintaining the U.S. Air Force’s current global “force structures and installations overseas rather than in the United States are roughly $3.4 billion, which amounts to about 2 percent of the Air Force’s total obligation authority. From a grand strategic perspective, a U.S. Air Force of a given size and capability will cost essentially the same regardless of where in the world it is based.” European nations offset some costs of these bases. For example, in 2009 Germany contributed $830.6 million to offset costs and improve US bases in Germany. “Under the current cost-sharing formula, the United States covers just over 22 percent of the total NATO Security Investment Program requirement.”
Evidence:
Hans Binnendijk and Magnus Nordenman. "NATO’s Value to the United States: By the Numbers." Atlantic Council. April 2018