Plenty people with supposed "security policy" expertise have waken up to the fact that the NATO (and EU) got to secure its Eastern frontier only lately. I don't hear any mea culpas, but it's kind of embarrassing to supposed experts, isn't it?
Well, the other noticeable tendency of those people is to suppose that we need to spend more on the military to rise up to the challenge (preferably in addition to continued nonsensical wars in sand bowls, of course).
Now that's another faux pas; the relevant question for changes in military budgets isn't whether an "expert" was startled, but the comparison of what's needed and what would be spent without any change.
Now let's have a reality check (though I've visited the topic before). This is how the pre-Ukrainian crisis spending looked like:
Now I see one country being crazy on military spending and then a long list of military great/medium powers.
Let's change the colours according to the situation in Eastern Europe: Blue for NATO/EU, Red for Russia and Belarus, orange for powers irrelevant in the Eastern European context:
You may now vet the data or put in the extra labour of correcting this with purchasing power parities, but the general picture won't change much. Russia would gain by about half the area (NOT diameter) in PPP.
We should also take into consideration that Russia needs some military power in Central and East Asia.
We should also take into consideration that Russia needs some military power in Central and East Asia.
Startled "experts" want us to spend more based on their personal failure to pay attention to basics, whereas the facts about actual military spending call at most for more quality, but certainly not for more quantity of spending in regard to the security of the Western World.
The security of the Western World is about doing actual deterrence and defence well, not about spending (even) more!
S O
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