Patterns of propaganda for higher military spending

.

A recent post deconstructed a propaganda article that argued for a larger U.S.Navy.

This time I will stay more general and more abstract and present the general patterns of propaganda for higher military spending.

Appeal to (tainted) authority

It's a general pattern, but most obvious in the United States where calls for more naval and air power are often supported by the claim that combatant commanders have called for more forces. 

You should never ask a child about what's the right amount of toys when you're in a toy store, so why would one ask the combatant commander about how many ships and fighters he should have?

Use of faux legal reasons for more military spending

The most widespread one is the "2% GDP military spending in NATO obligation" myth. There's no such obligation, just a memo that has no force as it was written by politicians lacking the authority to dictate the budget policies of their countries.

Proponents of higher military spending love such faux legal reasons, and it appears that they are the driving force behind the creation of such faux legal arguments. Such faux legal reasons have an air of inevitability, of obligation and duty - and you don't need any more reasons once you have an obligation. Except there's never any such obligation.
 

Inflationary use of the world "ally"

This is a close relative to the faux legal reason deception. Lots of more or less politically friendly countries get called allies that need be defended - often including countries such as Taiwan and Israel, which definitely are NOT allies of the United States. Neither would come to aid the U.S. if it was under attack. Military spending hawks pretend that there's an obligation to provide security assistance and reassurance (by presence) to such countries even if and though there's no such obligation.

Never mention allies as a factor that reduces the need for national military strength

Unless their think tank's sponsors want to sell weapons to said allies and the article is all about pressuring them to increase their military spending.

Alliances don't reduce the need for high military spending: Alliance obligations justify high military spending!

This is a close relative to the former and the faux legal reasons thing. In reality, to have an ally means that you need less national military strength.

Threat inflation

The description of the Russian as emerging and generally as scary as in the deconstructed article is quite typical. Sometimes such military spending hawks even pretended that Venezuela is a threat.

Not a single word about cost efficiency

What they want is never cost-efficient, thus they don't talk about cost efficiency.

Avoiding to irritate anyone

Those are smart influencers and lobbyists. They do not draw the ire of any political interest group needlessly. You'll hardly ever hear or read them going on an attack against wasteful spending*, wrong hawkish doctrines or them singling out an armed service for its failures (unless they get funded by interest groups with no interest in that particular armed service).

They do not criticise troops or question the quality of training, either. The reason is that troops and those who sympathise with them are compliant and free opinion multipliers to the military budget hawks.

Guaranteed careers

No matter how often their advice was disastrous to the nation, their careers are secured. The only career-ending move would be to become less hawkish or politically ineffective.

Appeal to primitive instincts

There's no complicated reasoning in their propaganda. It's more on the level of "Ugh! My clan is stronger! Ugh!"

Newspeak
To bomb some huts on a distant continent is "defense".

Never mentioning civilian alternatives to spending

The opportunity costs of military spending are never mentioned.

Never promote the purchase of all-foreign hardware

That is, unless the foreign company sponsors their think tank or a domestic arms industry giant is the sales partner.

Unlimited extremism

There's never enough. The ability to force one's way deep into the airspace of huge countries on a different continent or to force one's way into the coastal waters on a distant ocean is "defense" to them. There's no such thing as a "2 power standard" or any other kind-of-moderate idea in their arsenal. Nothing short of the ability to conquer the world would be sufficient military strength to them. And then they would want to conquer space next. Scratch that. They would want a military to conquer space in parallel to conquering the planet.

The rule of the Friedman unit

Military spending hawks are always proponents of the Friedman unit in times of war: Always give the military six more months to turn around the war. Six months later, give them six more months. Rinse and repeat. Making peace is acceptable only if maximalist objectives are met. Then the success would be used to promote the next war(s).

Fixation on platforms

This is a bit weird; military contractors sure make much profit with spare parts, munitions, maintenance and other services, but military spending hawks are obsessed about platforms and other nominal and quantitative measurements of military power. The rationale appears to be that the other expenditures follow the acquisition and operation of the platforms.

They do rarely discuss personnel increases compared to big ticket hardware buys
...because the economic interests behind them are about procurement, not employment. This is a variation of the fixation on platforms, of course.
 

They are utterly silent about veteran's care

This is a close relative to the fixation on platforms. Hospitals aren't among the sponsors of military-focused think tanks.
 

Movement within an established mainstream narrative

You won't read much original stuff from military spending hawks. They use an established mainstream narrative and enjoy its support. Most commonly, they make lots of assertions that are accepted by the mainstream regardless of how badly their thread to reality is severed.

They're pro-war on first opportunity

They know but one tool; a hammer. The world is covered with nails.

They haven't served in a major war.

Almost all military spending hawks are chickenhawks. A few of them served in the military, but I'm not aware of a single one of them having been in the midst of a mess that a war usually is.

They know but one answer: "more"

Sometimes they set goals for military strength. All such goals are but preliminary, though: Once reached, they want more. Always more. They don't know optimisation - they're all about maximisation.

Military spending hawks have almost never a good case for their recommendations. There's rarely a good case that more spending will reduce the risk of war, and it's outright impossible with the state of the economic sciences to make up a legitimate projection that an increase in military spending will be cost-efficient. The input variables are simply unknown.

Military budget hawks thus have to use logical fallacies, lies, nonsensical narratives and deception instead of rational arguments for their recommendations.

Many military spending hawks in the United States (where military spending is insanely high) are professional propagandists with a guaranteed career. Those with economic interests in higher military spending do sponsor such propagandists more or less directly. Other military spending hawks are politicians who represent a region with much arms industry. That's why the U.S. senator was listed as one author of the deconstructed piece, and that's why additional useless corvettes for the German navy were proposed recently. Such politicians raise special (regional) interests over national interests; they fail one decisive litmus test for patriotism.

It should be disqualifying, a career-ending event if one is revealed as such a military spending hawk. Such one trick ponies are utterly useless and indeed terribly damaging to their society.
Sadly, they make careers of such worthless commentary and the press & TV stations treat them as very serious people.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: A few pundit-for-hire types do deviate: They build a faux "balanced" reputation by criticizing certain military programs. Those criticised programs are invariably from competitors of their sponsors.

.

A guide for demanding a higher military budget

.

I'm tired of the insultingly low level in some contributions to 'security policy' debates. Again, minutes of my life were wasted by reading just another pointless text on how "interests" -> "sea" -> "ships" -> "win!" without any logical connections, merely pretending to make any sense.

Thus here's a beginner's guide for how to make a coherent, logical and waterproof argument for an increase in military spending:

Step 1

Identify something dissatisfying in the distant future in a scenario with the baseline budget. Past, present or near future issues don't matter, for budget increases take effect slowly.*

Step 2

Monetarise the issue. You cannot possibly make a logical, conclusive, uninterrupted case for more spending when you don't convert from "issue" to "currency" at some point.*

Step 3

Discount the issue using the long term government bond real interest rate as internal interest rate. Money in the far future isn't the same as money right now, after all.

Step 4

Get an idea for how the military could lessen the issue (by doing ...).* Put a price tag on it, discounted.*

Step 5

Execute an ethics check. Benefits from bullying are unethical, drop any such plans.

Step 6

Reason and justify by how much the change in military spending could lessen the future troubles.* We're not stupid enough** to fool ourselves into thinking it could be a 100% cure, right?

Step 7

Discount the extra military spending. 

Step 8

Now you can compare the discounted reduction of troubles with the discounted extra expenses. Stop right here if the latter is higher.

Step 9

Identify alternative uses for the extra budget. Infrastructure investments, civilian foreign policy, education, disease prevention, crime fighting, whatever. Identify how much benefit could be gained* by the most promising alternative.

Step 10

Quantify the economic benefit from keeping the people in civilian jobs instead of hiring them as extra personnel for the military.* Discount this benefit.

Step 11

Compare the future benefits from more military spending with the most promising non-military alternative. 

STFU about more military spending if it doesn't show a superiority over the most promising civilian opportunities.

Step 12

Now consider the damages done to society by government revenue.* This puts an extra 1-30% price tag on government spending; administrative expenses of revenue gathering, judicial expenditures, cost of tax advisers, monetarised damage from suboptimal behaviour of dodging taxes with otherwise inefficient exploitation of tax loopholes etc.

Step 13
Compare the pro-more military funding net benefit left over from Step 11 with the costs from step 12.
STFU about more military spending if the "more military spending" case doesn't prevail.

You may wonder why not compare the extra military budgeting with the least efficient civilian spending already in the budget and then possibly shift the resources. The reason is simple; you may argue for the wasteful spending's removal separately, for it has no justification independent on what you do with the military budget. And when you did so with all wasteful spendings, you would have no such wasteful spending as benchmark left.

This isn't how wannabe advisers do it, of course. The just like the idea of the military having this or that additionally. They don't make an uninterrupted, logical case for more. They just prefer more, from gut level.

The many uncertainties involved in these steps prohibit a conclusive, uninterrupted case for a particular proposal for more military spending. Only god-like knowledge could build such an uninterrupted case for it. Nobody who argues for more military spending can prove his/her point. It's impossible. They may fake to have a strong case, though. And that's why there are so many phonies, so many "much style, little substance" types involved in this, and why officials with supposed authority of being insiders can fake making a good case for more military spending so well.

And that's why they all talk and write nonsense when they pretend to have a strong case for more military spending.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

P.S.: I kind of wrote the same in 2011 already.

*: Uncertainties involved in here.

**: Huge uncertainty involved in here.

.

What does this tell about the West?

.
The Carnegie Endowment has a study about China and the usual suspects for a clash with China.

NextBigFuture offered this table as a summary for their scenarios:

H/T Nextbigfuture,
graphic should enlarge if clicked

Have a look at the line with "Defense spending as % of GDP". The "aggressive ultranationalism" scenario is the one with more than 2%.

Context:

source: CIA World Factbook

I created this diagram with data from the CIA World Factbook, showing only developed countries with military ("defense") spending of more than 2 %. Omitted are countries with a domestic civil war or other unique national defence challenges (Turkey, Israel). Also omitted are European countries which enacted drastic cuts (Greece, Portugal). I did not regard some Central Asian former USSR countries as developed countries. The U.S. military spending has also taken a drastic cut, but is no doubt still above 3% GDP.

Let's think about the de facto allegation that more than 2% GDP military spending would indicate aggressive ultranationalism in the case of China.

There are two major way of looking at national defense requirements; either you assume that the difference between wealthy and very wealthy does change the actual need (not "want") for military capabilities or it doesn't. %GDP as a metric has the advantage that the increase of personnel and other costs by the increased GDP should not show up in this metric.

Now if you believe that a bigger economy does require more military spending - and this seems to be the position of the crowd that thinks military spending should be oriented at a %GDP figure - then you should agree that the Chinese need to raise their military power as their economy grows. And this would not necessarily indicate any tilt towards aggressiveness. 

The second graphic can be read as indicating that more than 2% GDP military spending is hardly an indicator for "aggressive ultranationalism".

Or maybe you think the military spending needs for national security do not depend (much) on the country's economic power. Well, in this case one ought to ask how much spending they need to defend themselves. Judging by the military spending of the countries threatening China and its lack of useful allies, one could this way easily justify the Chinese spending a third of world-wide military spending. (They have much less.)

Furthermore, the Chinese do have a LOT of maritime overseas trade. They (their wealth) are dependent on imports and exports, including energy imports. Judging by how Westerners talk about military "needs", the Chinese can easily claim their "need" of dominating the western Pacific Ocean and the northern Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf. That's about the level of ambition I read in American and British, at times even Australian or German, sources.

This is of course ludicrous. We cannot provide great security to our maritime trade while they provide great security to theirs - that is unless there is absoluteley no conflict potential between 'the West' and China, or unless we cooperate* to provide security to maritime trade of Westerners and Chinese.

This goes at the heart of the problem of some more militarily ambitious Western countries: They strive for perfect security (expressed by their intolerance for even minor threats). Perfect security for one power or bloc means perfect insecurity or dependence for everyone else, of course.

I suppose this is a kind of overambition and intellectual laziness that came up when the Soviet Union disappeared. Previously, almost everybody was aware that perfect security is an aim only for fools. Ambitions were more modest. That's kind of why the West did not spend that terribly much more on the military before 1990 than today (related). There was a huge, impressive adversary bloc - but our military spending was modest. Today there's just a list of ridiculous bogeymen - and we still spend a lot.

I suppose China has in part legitimate national security concerns and as a great power and generally a power representing more than a fifth of mankind it's understandable that they don't want their maritime trade 'secured' by another not very much friendly great power.

Two per cent GDP military spending in the long run would hardly signify aggressive ultranationalism. I guesstimate that more than about six per cent would signal a commitment to military strength that would justify much concern in North America and Europe.

Many people are nowadays in the business of building up China as the next huge bogeyman, to secure a steady and rising supply of money into the military-industrial complex. There is very little money to be earned by playing down China as a threat or rival, leading to an almost inevitable bias of the voices heard on the topic.

The Carnegie Endowment study I mentioned is actually quite uninteresting to me. It's just an example for the general attitude and hypocrisy.

Western countries can supposedly bully other countries at will and apply measures out of proportion, while in the case of China even quite defensive military power such as what's known as the DF-21D "anti-access" missile gets talked up as if it was aggressive.**

In fact, China does so far very little of significance beyond its own region. They don't have a military port in the Atlantic or regular carrier patrols along the Europe-US maritime trade route, for example.

 

I ask my readers to run a hypocrisy check every time they read about some supposed aggressive, non-allied power. Such as China, Iran, maybe in the future Russia again, and in the past Iraq, Syria and Libya.

Remember the most aggressive stances that are deemed fine for Western powers, and compare them to what the supposedly evil foreigners actually did. Such as; when did China bomb some other country recently, and when did Iran invade another country the last time?***

S O

*: Such as adding credibility to the Charter of the United Nation's intolerance for aggressive bilateral behaviour instead of undermining it!?

**: These "anti-access" systems may deny U.S. carrier battlegroups access to places from where they could launch air strikes at China effectively.

***: I didn't find later examples than 1979 and  1738, respectively.

.

Illogical responses to the aggression against Ukraine

.

I've shown multiple times that logical thinking is *a bit* in short supply when it comes to military affairs and military policy.

So first, the background to what I'll write about this time: Warfare is destructive, not productive. It could only be profitable if you take much away from others, which de facto requires a war of aggression. Hardly any war of aggression is profitable, though - the annexation of the Crimea a few years ago is an extremely expensive affair for Russia (a loss, not profit), as the region requires many subsidies, for example.

It thus follows that the main (and noble) purpose of a military shall be deterrence & defence; keep the peace, and if that fails protect from avoidable damage. This applies to the own country and to allied countries (defensive alliance, "collective security"). I accept intervention in genocides (a very tricky affair, as it can be misused to lie a country into war), intervention to liberate a recently invaded country and interventions to stop an aggressor in a non-allied country as acceptable motives as well.

This background clearly justifies some military spending inside NATO, primarily for deterrence. That worked just splendidly for NATO so far, albeit at high and certainly higher than necessary costs.

We had post-1992 very little outside threat to deter, mostly it was Russia once NATO accepted the Baltic countries as new members.

So the status quo as of late 2021 was a certain amount of military spending, a certain amount of planned military spending, a successful deterrence so far and a threat country Russia (Belarus is negligible) that had known conventional military weaknesses and its military power was somewhere on a spectrum ranging from "dysfunctional 2nd to 3rd rate military" to "the military reforms worked, they could overrun the Baltics + Poland + Iceland before NATO could counter-concentrate".

Again; our deterrence worked, there's no new evidence to suggest otherwise.

Now Russia attacked Ukraine and is obviously embarrassing itself. They may eventually "win" conventionally, but a long list of embarrassing details has surfaced that showed that the Russian Army and the Russian Tactical aviation are rather on the lower end of the aforementioned spectrum.

The rational conclusion is thus that Russia is much less scary to us in the short and medium term at least than was previously thought possible.

The rational consequence should thus be to re-evaluate our military spending. We obviously intended spent more (believing in a potentially more scary threat) than what a rational spending decision should look like now.

Instead, panicky spending increases (especially in Germany) can be expected.

This panicky reaction can fairly easily be explained by surprised politicians waking up from slumber and finally paying attention to the deterrence topic, which reflects terribly on their competence. It also reflects terribly on their competence that they don't seem to be able to make the rational call. Moreover, the media is primitive and irrational as usual and totally goes along with that nonsense.

No, having personally neglected the topic does not mean that the nation spent too little on the topic in the past.

For clarification; I am not against military spending increases in all cases. It might make sense to temporarily (for about five years) increase military spending to enact some reform. The sad reality is that the military bureaucracies don't use budget increases like that due to incompetent and/or ineffective political oversight. The first (and powerful) instinct of these bureaucracies is to grow instead. Hardly ever does a military bureaucracy disband some irrelevant unit without replacement while the budget is big. We could spend A LOT less on the military in Europe and still be extremely good at deterring aggression against the alliance. Germany wastes much money on a useless navy, on small/occupation wars nonsense, on excessive staffs, on predictably irrelevant procurement programs and on a ridiculously inflated medical branch. We could cut that nonsense to reduce our military spending without the slightest bit of net disadvantage and could at the same time afford more effective land forces and more survivable air power.

related:

/2019/04/fair-burden-sharing-in-nato.html

/2018/04/narratives-as-sustainers-of-excessive.html

/2018/04/patterns-of-propaganda-for-higher.html

/2017/02/stephen-m-walt-on-2-debate.html

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2016/07/deterrence-and-defence-efficiency-in.html

/2016/07/warsaw-summit-communique.html

/2015/07/why-military-budgets-are-as-big-as-they.html

/2015/02/the-stupid-is-strong-in-german-navies.html

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2014/12/conquest-is-for-losers.html

/2014/07/a-guide-for-demanding-higher-military.html

/2014/04/parkinsons-law.html

/2014/03/appropriate-military-strength.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2013/05/what-does-this-tell-about-west.html

/2011/11/quick-lecture-on-military-budgeting-in.html

/2011/10/national-security-policy-rational-way.html

/2011/07/about-crazily-warped-interpretations-of.html

/2011/05/military-budgets-attempt-to-create-sane.html

/2011/01/bacevichs-takedown-of-military-spending.html

/2009/06/marathon-is-over.html

S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

.

Finland joins NATO

.

Finland joins NATO. It's unfashionable to think so, but alliances used to be a concept in foreign policy to further the own nation's best interests. The notion that a country somehow has to serve an alliance rather than the other way around is a perverse distortion.

What's in it for Germany? Well, the accession of Finland adds almost no additional risk of a hot war (considering its longtime neutral and moderate foreign policy) and Finland adds a lot of land power (especially hundred of thousands of reservists in an army that always took actual defence seriously) to the alliance.

This added military power doesn't improve the odds that Russia would lose a war with NATO and given the demonstration of Russian military shortcomings in Ukraine*, it is beyond reasonable doubt that Finland does not improve the (already 100%) deterrence of Russian aggressions against NATO itself.

The logical conclusion is thus that Finland's accession to the North Atlantic Treaty adds military power on top of already sufficient (for deterence & defence) military power within NATO. 

This means that a continuation of the current military spending levels is necessarily and beyond reasonable doubt wasteful (even assuming there was no inefficiency in it at all). 

The accession of Finland thus means that we (the old NATO members) should revise military spending planning DOWN from the planned levels (at least down from the levels planned before Finland joining might possibly have been 'priced in').

The real benefit to Germany (and most other old NATO members) is thus that we can save military spending, as the alliance has gained military power by adding Finland rather than by adding military spending.

Military spending is not virtuous, it's not productive, it's not an efficient way of promoting science or technology. Military spending is government consumption like spending on armoured sedans for ministers. Its justification is not emotions, it's the achievement of a sufficient deterence (and as backup defence) to protect our freedom, prosperity and lives. It's comparable to buying a good lock for the door of a family home; there's no point in spending ever more money on it if it already does its job well. Likewise, you cannot further the prosperity of the family by spending more on the door lock; it's an entirely unsuitable tool for that purpose.

The insight that the accession of Finland should trigger military spending reductions is as alien to the general debate on military spending as is the insight that Russia proving to be a conventional military Potemkin' village  an empire without clothes, means that we need to spend less on detering it or defending against it than was previously reasonable to believe.

The dominant notion is that somehow we need to spend more on armed forces, and hardly anyone asks about what kind of reasoning supposedly supports that notion. The vested special interests of career officers, arms industry and legislators from arms industry-rich districts combine to support the illogical notion that causes more economic harm to a country than the vast majority of criminals combined.

The most disappointing part is not that we cannot defeat these special interest groups in pursuit of the nation's general interests. The truly disappointing part is that there's hardly anyone even only challenging to that fight.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Russia revealed that its armed forces combine all weaknesses and faults ever known from Russian armed forces of the post-Suvorov era at this time (other than the mutiny & revolution of 1917).

.

The miracle of Greece's defence spending efficiency

.

Back in 2009 I wrote about the relatively high military spending of Greece and my expectation about its impending reduction.* I wrote:

Greece's military spending is about 3 % GDP, about twice as much as necessary in comparison with allies. That's already less than the 2005 figure of 4.3%. I expect a military budget crunch down to about 1.5-2% GDP till 2015.

According to SIPRI military expenditures fell from 7.660 billion EUR in 2009 to 4.472 billion EUR in 2013.

According to Eurostat** Greece's GDP fell from 237.4 billion EUR in 2009 to 182.4 billion in 2013.

This yields a drop from 4.21% GDP in 2009 to 2.45% GDP in 2013.
The CIA World Factbook offers a much smaller figure; 1.72% GDP in 2012.

- - - - -

Now let's consider what's missing in this picture:
An aggression against Greece. There was none.
Nor did the EU as an alliance or NATO as an alliance get into trouble because the Greeks spent less on their military.

This is the best real world experiment imaginable for the thesis that the Greek state overspent on defence. It wasted likely 1-3% GDP during almost the entire post-Cold War period. Furthermore, an unnecessarily high quantity of young men were removed from the private sector or had their education interrupted.***

Similar natural experiments happened for U.S.military spending: The U.S.Army and U.S.Marine Corps were very much fixed in Iraq and Afghanistan and had their training reoriented for occupation duties for years. Meanwhile, North Korea did not attack South Korea. PR China did not attack Taiwan. Not a single ally, much less the U.S. themselves were attacked by any real threat during these years. This is the best evidence imaginable in support of the thesis that the U.S. overspends on defence: All those army brigades busy with preparing for, being in or recovering after being in Iraq or Afghanistan weren't really needed for national or alliance defence at all.

One may consider such natural experiments as weak evidence, but they face no evidence at all pointing at the opposite conclusion!

There are merely claims and conjectures supporting the size of the military expenditures, not any natural experiment results. Never in modern history did a military budget cut lead to a series of events that ended with aggression - no matter how often the pro-military spending people assert that budget cuts put lives at risk and similar.

Greece's military spending efficiency was increased very much, as they got the same national security at a much lower price. Has the Greek military improved very much, become incredibly smarter? No, not at all. It was merely inflated well beyond the optimum previously (and I suppose it's still well above optimum today).

The reason for the oversized military spending was the stupid Little Cold War between Greece and Turkey. Turkey cannot possibly take even a single island away from Greece by force because Greece could call on all EU allies for defence, while nobody would be obliged to help Turkey. Still, politicians played with the myth of a Turkish threat for decades, similar to what happens in Pakistan. Now guess what the new government's minister of defence did right after taking office? He provoked Turkey with his new toys.

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: related: An article about Greek military expenditures history

**: I'd like to use this opportunity to voice my extreme disdain for the EUROSTAT website.

***: I know of a Greek student who wanted to become an engineer in Germany and was recalled for a pointless conscript service before he was able to complete his almost for-free university study in Germany. This happened after the Fiscal troubles blew up in Greece.

 

.

The military spending free riding discussion

.

There's again a public discussion about whether allies of the U.S. have a free ride on its military spending. Many comments and contributions in this discussion are charged with faulty logic, ignorance, disinformation, prejudices, domestic partisanship or emotions.

One example of this discussion is here.

Bigger graphic file here. Hat tip to P.a.p.-Blog.

I think the "answers" in this decades-old discussion can be grouped like this:

(1) Yes, they do. They should spend more.

(2) Yes, they do. The U.S. should spend less.

(3) Yes, they do. It's what the U.S. wants; be ahead of all other's military capabilities.

(4) No, they don't. It's no free ride if you pay billions as well.

(5) The greater U.S. expenses are due to its need for greater logistical and forced entry capabilities.

(6) No, the Europeans don't, for there's no problematic threat to them in sight.

(7) It depends. About which ally are we speaking?

Now I'd like to comment on these generic answers:

(1) Yes, they do. They should spend more.

What for should Germany spend more on the military, for example? It could modernise its military a bit quicker, that would feel better for military fans - and few else. There's no present threat we'd need to build our military up against. Equipment shortcomings are more a problem of suboptimal procurement than caused by budget limitations.

The answer may be correct in regard to Japan and Taiwan, but I suspect that Taiwan simply has a different grand strategy than an utterly hopeless arms race with mainland China.

(2) Yes, they do. The U.S. should spend less.

The "Yes, they do" part suffers from the same problem as (1). The "spend less" part makes sense, but it depends of course on the preferences of the U.S. electorate.

(3) Yes, they do. It's what the U.S. wants; be ahead of all other's military capabilities.

Again, same problem as (1) with the "Yes, they do" part. The later part is a reasonable attempt of an explanation in my opinion.

(4) No, they don't. It's no free ride if you pay billions as well.

It's a reasonable perspective, but it doesn't really answer what the critics mean; the different efforts in %GDP.

(5) The greater U.S. expenses are due to its need for greater logistical and forced entry capabilities.

This is again a reasonable explanation for a significant part of the difference in military spending. Let's again take Germany as example; there's simply no reason why we should have a forced entry Marine Corps and a full-fledged amphibious fleet or strategic sea-lift ships. There was a discussion about one amphibious landing ship (enough for a battalion of ground troops) in the 90's and the idea was dismissed.

(6) No, the Europeans don't, for there's no problematic threat to them in sight.

This is a major part of my answer to the question as well. See my explanation in (1).

(7) It depends. About which ally are we speaking?

That's a smart answer - and apparently too smart for many participants of the discussion.

South Korea faces a clear threat and has a strong military (the U.S. forces in South Korea are very small by comparison). It's lacking a modern fighter force to face the PRC's air power, but they have no chance to change this anyway because of their much smaller economy.

Taiwan has a quite 'suboptimal' army and seems to orient its military spending at the scenario of a military air/sea blockade by the mainland Chinese.

Japan could clearly spend more on its military and shape up, especially back in the 90's when it was pouring fortunes into stimulus projects anyway. Japan is on the other hand not in serious conflict with any threat country and might be well-served by a neutrality policy with a defensive military strategy.

The European allies could overpower both the Russian threat and the Arab threat at once. There's no real need for any U.S. military strength for the defence of Europe. It has two nuclear powers, guaranteed air dominance based on European air forces alone, vastly superior ground forces (due to higher quality) and vastly superior naval power. It takes a huge prejudice or ignorance to think that Europe's defence wouldn't be ensured without an unusually high level of U.S. military spending.

- - - - -

I've sometimes read the opinion that the Europeans would spend more if the U.S. spent less. The opposite may be true.

Some of the European army modernisation efforts are aimed at interoperability; compatibility of communications equipment. Many other costly projects are about buying "modern" equipment ; the old equipment has at times only become outdated due to newer U.S. equipment, not due to threat equipment. The Javelin ATGM with its lock-on infra-red sensor is a good example. TOW could still be considered to be modern and on par with all threats if Javelin wasn't introduced. Some European armies have bought Javelin or the similar Israeli Spike missile.

A U.S. military procurement low tide could contrary to some expectations even reduce European military spending.

The military needs of the East Asian partners of the U.S. are being driven by the increasingly more powerful Chinese military. It's reasonable to say that the latter's growth is at least in part due to the threat posed to China by the U.S.. A great power like China cannot be expected to accept naval and air superiority of a distant great power in its coastal waters. The same can be said about air superiority of the same distant great power over China's territory (in the event of conflict). It's only natural that China invested in a large modern fighter force - and this created the fighter procurement shortfalls of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan in the first place.

A U.S. national defence policy that's more about defence and less about force projection would be less threatening to China and would likely reduce, not increase the military strength needs of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan (although not necessarily their budgets).

The "free ride on U.S. military power" discussion suffers from a U.S. bias. It seems that most voices heard are of American origin. The discussion rarely takes into account that allied and befriended nations often have entirely different expectations for their military, different preferences, different strategies, different threat perceptions ... or the ability to think of threats first and military requirements second.

The ability to deploy 10,000 to 20,000 more troops to Afghanistan, an amphibious invasion fleet or an aerial tanker fleet would have little value to most allies. The idea that they're somehow free riding because the U.S. does things (like the Iraq invasion) that its allies don't want to do is quite fallacious at times. The Iraq invasion was against the political will of most allies, for example. So how would they "free ride" on the U.S. capability to pull off such invasions? The U.S. itself doesn't seem to benefit much of its "force projection" capabilities except some extremely nebulous "global stability" or "dominance" advantages.

It's also noteworthy that the U.S. military spending isn't so high because allied countries asked the U.S. to spend more and more. It's that high due to domestic U.S. political culture and habits. Being "strong on defense" is somehow being regarded as a plus for a national level politician. There's no such (assumption of) preference for military power in most other countries. Republicans boast that they're strong on "defense" and democrats don't dare to be labelled "weak on defense", leading for example to military budget increases under the Obama administration for no other apparent reason.

The reaction to a "I'm strong on defense" statement in a European election campaign would look approximately like this: "Huh? What do you mean? Anyway - what will you do to create more jobs?"

Last but not least, there is a desirable free-riding in regard to non-conventional forces. Taiwan, South Korea and Japan could build up nuclear arsenals if they weren't kinda protected by the nuclear-armed great power USA. The latter doesn't want such nuclear proliferation, so this free ride in terms of nuclear forces is entirely intentional.

It's illogical to accuse others of a "free ride" after raising the own expenditures for domestic reasons to almost half of the global expenditures and without being able to point out against which problem the others should spend more.

Show me a threat that Europe cannot meet on its own or together with a hypothetical 2% GNP military spending U.S. ally and I'll agree that we're not pulling our weight (having a "cheap", albeit not "free" ride).

The greatest concern is Europe's ability to ramp up its military power within 2-6 years in response to the emergence of a real major threat. Demands for more expeditionary capabilities and U.S. forces don't help in this regard. Only U.S. R&D on military tech is helpful, and that's a rather inefficient contribution because U.S. military R&D is extremely cost-inefficient.

S O

.

Horseshite

 

"Dunning-Kruger effect" is the term for people basically being too stupid and incompetent to understand that they are too stupid and incompetent for an issue.

'He's a stupid man's idea of a smart man.' was said about a certain politician.

Combine these two things and you get the modern-day pundits (and more general: "comment-givers") who now diagnose the need for more military spending. They do so with an aura that spans a spectrum from "honest truth-teller" to "elder statesman".

They're idiots. That's the nice way to put it.

 And the media people who amplify such messages are too stupid to smell the horseshite.

The Russian Armed Forces are failing to subdue a country that hadn't even come close to spending at least 10 billion $ in a year from independence three decades ago till the all-out invasion of 2022.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/UKR/ukraine/military-spending-defense-budget

NATO members had 1,096.6 billion $ military spending in 2020, 325.9 billion $ without the U.S. (which went insane long ago).

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_197050.htm

Russia's military spending never exceeded 88.4 billion $ in any year.

https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/military-expenditure

And the horseshite producers conclude that, obviously, we don't spend enough. European NATO outnumbers Russian military personnel about 2:1 without counting the U.S., and outspends it by about 4:1 (not quite as dramatic when correcting by purchasing power parity, but still outspending).

We do spend too much - not too little - on the military.

There's practically no other direct threat to NATO than Russia, and it proved to be a sick man of Europe, utterly rotten and incapable. Their air force is ineffective, their army is shite, Russia of today combines all flaws known from past 200 years of Russian history while the only strength is the size of their dumb munition stocks and factories.

The realisation that the only threat is impotent leads to the logical conclusion that previous threat estimates - and thus required military power assessments - need to be revised DOWN.

Some people may be concerned about the PRC, but that's no direct threat to any NATO territory*, and nobody seems to argue to pump arms, spares & munitions into Taiwan for real NOW. No, these horseshite spewers want more military in Europe, where it matters jack shit for Taiwan.

This is not fantasy football. It's about real public funds. Billions and billions of Euros that would be allocated to military power if the horseshite becomes mainstream. One billion Euros is equivalent to about 100 citizen lives not saved by preventative measures that cost. One billion Euros is equivalent to 100 human sacrifices on the altar of wankers feeling good about military power.

Horseshite is not "honest truth-telling" or "elder statesman wisdom". It's homicidal horseshite, it's quasi-genocidal.

Misallocating so much money has real-world opportunity costs. It's not fantasy money in a fantasy game.

The horseshite-spewers are ethically to be ranked well below bank robbers and rapists. Not only is horseshite more dangerous to the society; at least some bank robbers and rapists are aware of themselves being terrible, antisocial persons.

The European armed forces as a whole (and big ones such as the British or German ones) don't have an underfunding problem. They have an inefficiency problem. Billions and billions of Euros are being allocated to worthless crap that matters jack shit for deterrence and defence. Meanwhile, essentials such as large and properly cared-for munition and spare parts stocks are getting neglected.

It's the "hollow force" syndrome. The "hollow force" syndrome is not being caused by underfunding. It's caused by stubborn resistance to cutting fat and stubborn resistance to resizing according to budget. The generals and admirals prefer to keep units and platforms in service in hope of getting bigger budgets later again rather than to resize. It's a shared responsibility of minister of defence and generals/admirals.

They (MoD, admirals, generals) fail their nation by hollowing out the armed forces, NOT the legislators who appropriate budgets that don't fit to the legacy military size. The executive branch is supposed to follow the legislative branch on this, not the other way around. Your waiter does not get to dictate how much you have to spend on dining.

We have huge fiscal challenges to cope with. The demographic changes in much of Europe (fertility well below 2.0) make long-term investments in infrastructure and real estate (rather than building cheaper, less durable stuff) advisable. Decarbonisation costs much. Chronic large budget deficits are unsustainable, as the rate of technological progress (and thus GDP growth) keeps slowing down. Generational budget distribution fights are brewing under the radar.

There's never a good time to waste resources, and that's very evident today.

We need to improve the resources allocation in the armed forces (more spare parts, more munitions, more budget for exercises, less units that are irrelevant for deterrence and defence).

We do NOT need to spend vastly more on the military. In fact, we could cut our military spending by half without any loss of security or stability.

related:

https://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/search?q=military+spending

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

*: Guam and Hawaii are NOT covered by the North Atlantic treaty.

.

A rational case for keeping the expenses for military power very low (I)

.

There's practically no way how a country could have a net benefit from major military action nowadays.* Even successful aggressions such as the Crimea invasion or the invasion of Iraq tend to be costly affairs for years to come, with negligible benefits.

The only wars that appear to promise to be better than all peaceful alternatives appear to be (short) wars of independence, for people mostly value sovereignty very highly.

A possible exception could be a long-term preventative war in which a rising power gets stalled by a medium-sized war before it could unleash a more damaging large-sized war (or even "win" it).
Even such war scenarios still have to out-compete peaceful alternative policies to be the best course of action. Nazi Germany could have been stalled by a total trade embargo and an alliance of British Empire, France, Czechoslovakia and Poland before 1938, for example. The result would likely have been a triangle Cold War (Republics-Fascists-USSR). Much of the PR China's rise and its near-indispensability in global supply chains could have been avoided by refusing trade as well.

There's thus a conclusion that aggressive wars are hardly ever the best choice. We should avoid them altogether, for many people can be manipulating into supporting a bad aggressive war idea by warmongering propaganda (see Iraq invasion 2003).

- - - - -

Thus only defensive wars make sense. This does naturally extend to collective defence of an alliance, so a country could and should come to aid of a non-aggressive ally under attack even if the specific conflict is no direct threat to its interests.

One should be careful about which country should get the promise of aid in case of aggression against it; aggressive countries should be excluded.

This means that in the end, all 'sensible' wars are defensive wars either on the national or on the alliance level (not necessarily on the tactical, operational or warfare strategy levels).

- - - - -

How should a (politically) defensive war be waged? 

A complete "victory" that includes the elimination of the aggressor as a threat requires greater effort and incurs greater harm than a war that achieves a white peace (a peace or armistice that includes a return to the pre-war control of territory). One could even make a case that the optimum is to seek a minor defeat, but this is very difficult to realize politically (due to domestic politics). It would require politicians not only to recognize the optimum, but also to put the country before their career.

The difference between a white peace and unconditional surrender (or total elimination) of the aggressor does suffer from the very same problems as an aggressive war: It's to be avoided because it harms the own party more than it benefits it.

The way to go for an alliance under attack is to wage war with the objective of a white peace.

- - - - -

This means that many capabilities that would be necessary for the achievement of extremist objectives are unnecessary. You don't need troops for occupation duty and you don't need to be able to project air and land power deep beyond the alliance's pre-war borders in spite of resistance.

- - - - -

You need to be able to first frustrate an aggressor (the capability to do so should help to avoid the aggression through deterrence in the first place) and you need to be able to offer a face-saving exit (which means that maybe the aggressor should have some bargaining chips left to make the peace look more like a deal than a dictat). Furthermore, you need to either gain bargaining chips or to liberate all relevant invaded and occupied territories. Bargaining chips are much better, for they allow a return to peace through a negotiated exchange of bargaining chips. It's difficult to offer a face-saving exit if you liberated all invaded territory.

- - - - -

Now that we have all this in mind let's state the obvious: Military spending is public consumption, not prosperity-driving public investment. We spend for a service, and this service is mostly the protection against foreign armed threats. Side benefits of military spending such as disaster response services, bad music, aerobatics teams, feelings of pride or dual utility R&D efforts justify but a negligible fraction of the military spending in major Western countries.

More military spending than necessary for deterrence does not yield substantial benefits and is thus wrong.

We can REDUCE (NOT increase) the needed military spending by being allied with other powers that provide a net benefit (most importantly, they should not be aggressive unless the alliance serves the purpose to eliminate them from the list of potential antagonist powers). To have allies means to have less potential enemies and the allied wartime strength becomes at least partially available for your cause. Repeat: Being allied does reduce the need for national military spending. Any exception tot his rule requires that either military spending is completely pointless (and thus to be avoided altogether without alliance due to futility or entering the alliance added so many potential enemies that it's a mistake to join.

It is wise to spend on military capability about as little as necessary for its primary purpose.
Smart alliance policy and military spending oriented towards deterrence and (in the event of war) achieving minor defeat or white peace are the way to go.

related:
/2008/09/overly-aggressive-allies.html
/2009/04/si-vis-pacem-para-bellum.html
/2009/05/utility-of-nato.html
/2009/11/extremist-warfare.html
/2009/12/greek-fiscal-troubles-and-military.html 

/2015/02/the-miracle-of-greeces-defence-spending.html

/2011/02/alliances-and-guarantee-of-independence.html

/2017/02/the-quick-white-peace-approach.html

S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 (Part II will delve into a less abstract plane of the topic.)

*: This is an opinion. Anyone who disagrees shall be reminded that his or her disagreement is but an opinion as well, for we have no total costs:total benefits analysis of any violent conflict. The arts and science of mankind don't suffice to do such a complete appraisal. I formed my opinion based on the often very expensive, yet usually marginally beneficial conflicts of the past decades. The best case for the profitability of aggressions is in my opinion the (never provable) assertion that a war may have prevented another, worse war. The 1991 Gulf War and 1999 Bombing of Yugoslavia are candidates for such an assertion. Yet even such an assertion does not exclude that the same benefit could have been had cheaper through peaceful means.

.

Public debt & Military expenditures diagrams

The Arms and Influence blog reacted to my Japan and the risks of huge government debt article and inspired me to dig a bit into (easily available) statistics.

It's a plausible assumption that the ability to spend much on the military is being limited by debt obligations - and I wanted to check the statistics.

Unfortunately, a simple comparison of public debt and military expenditures offers only a snapshot and suggests rather a causality (high expenditures may cause high debt) than to tell about the sustainability of the situation. The ultimate test will be the future. We've got enough countries for a meaningful observation in the next decades.

The debt/spending comparison yielded some interesting diagrams, though.
The data is exclusively from the CIA World Factbook this time, only countries with both data given were included. Debt data was mostly of 2007, whereas the available military spending data was usually 2005, 2006 or 2007. Note that this time debt is being expressed as what the CIA defined as "Public debt".
At least it's all the same source.

Most countries have clearly less than 70% GNP public debt and 4% GNP military spending. Another group has up to 110% and 7% respectively, but there are conspicuously few countries in the upper right part of that group.
Finally, there are several exceptions with more extreme spending or debt, but none combines both.

These were all countries, but I was only interested in the industrialized nations. I used the IMF's list of "advanced economies" to focus on that group.

Israel is a special case in this graphic because U.S. military aid to Israel equals about a quarter of its military spending. It's in a very special situation as well.
Singapore is an exception because of its small size as a city-state.
Japan is an exception due to its constitutional (theoretical) limitation on self-defence forces.

Military spending and public debt levels seem not to be very correlated among the advanced economies - up to about 3% military spending and 70% public debt seems to be usual.

An analysis over time (since 1992, for example) would offer hints about sustainability - this diagram is only useful to differentiate between usual and unusual spending/debt levels among advanced economies.

My best guess is that Italy (104% and 1.8% according to CIA) and Belgium (84.6% and 1.3% according to CIA) are good representations for a nation with high public debt.

(By the way - the CIA World Factbook data is partially weird. Norway's public debt is being given as 83.1%, which is much too high. I didn't exclude such questionable cases, though. The diagrams were made with a very quick/short research.)

The Excel sheet for the diagrams is available upon request.
 

S O

"How do we strengthen NATO?"

.
Think Defence asked that question on Twitter and I counted what the (many) replies were (at that time):

• 13 variations of 'spend more' (not counting proposals to add members)
  
• 5 variations of 'determine its purpose'
• other replies were not proper answers or I could not group them
  

Well, in reality even European NATO (not counting U.S. and Canada, but counting Turkey for once) very much outspends the Russian federation + Belarus on military power (also in PPP). Our troops outnumber them almost 2:1. Europe only has to defend to the East, while Russia has security challenges in the Caucasus region, Central Asia and East Asia as well.

The quantity of spending cannot really be the problem, so the most numerous response was an expression of ignorance, or worse.

/2014/01/european-and-russian-military-capability.html

/2015/10/military-im-balance-in-europe.html

(These links are dated, but the overall picture didn't change much except that the UK isn't part of the EU any more.)

This is not specific to TDs twitter followers; it's a widespread misconception.

I wrote for years that readiness and especially the readiness to deploy suitable ground forces quickly (in days) is the biggest issue, with vulnerability of European air power and other high value targets to a strategic surprise attack a close second.

The Americans are very, very close to worthless in regard to timely providing useful land power, but they're providing a deep air power reserve much of which could be deployed within weeks. The Battle of France 1940 has proven the limited usefulness of such deep air power reserves in face of a quick invasion, though. It's more of a reinforcement for the old NATO than for the newer members of Eastern Europe in case of a strategic surprise attack.

So we basically need land forces suitable for fighting mechanised Russian forces in Eastern Europe that can deploy 500...1,000 km a day on roads, that can bridge rivers (Oder, Vistula, Duna) to bypass busted bridges and that possess sufficient battlefield air defences against combat aircraft and drones. These land forces better keep the location of their high value targets (such as big radars) unknown to Russian agents and satellites in peacetime.

This doesn't require more spending at all. I am certain that European NATO could cut military spending substantially and still get much more deterrence and defence power out of it.

 

So why do we have armed forces that are inefficient and poorly oriented?

I blame naivete. A critical mass of naive military fanbois (from voters to politicians) tolerate or support military spending the way it is because 

• they fell for the attraction of stupid small wars in the past three decades and/or
• they fell for the attraction of inefficient prestigious toys and/or
• they were and are naive enough to believe that senior officers pursue national defence interests when in reality their decision-making is biased in favour of organisational and individual self-interest. A general or admiral wanting something is a worthless information and should simply be ignored by politicians and voters. The only way to more efficient spending is to ignore the biased advice given by insiders and to think for yourself.
  

 

some (not all) related blog posts:

/2016/07/theses-on-future-air-war-future-air.html

/2021/05/navies-obsession-with-peacetime-hull.html

/2021/02/military-punditry-and-think-tanking.html

/2015/07/why-military-budgets-are-as-big-as-they.html

/2013/04/armed-forces-create-doctrine-to-justify.html

/2012/09/military-capability-as-emotional-need.html

/2017/01/human-sacrifice-and-military-spending.html

/2017/05/the-ideal-minister-of-defence.html

/2013/09/effective-oversight-over-bureaucracies.html

/2013/08/more-about-armed-bureaucracies.html

/2013/08/niskanens-bureaucrats.html

/2010/12/supply-demand-and-weird-statement.html

/2014/03/the-principal-agent-problem-politicians.html

/2016/09/airbase-safety.html

/2018/03/luftwaffe-f-35-or-typhoon-for-airground.html

/2010/04/military-spending-free-riding.html

/2017/02/stephen-m-walt-on-2-debate.html

/2014/11/nato-summits-and-spending-pledges.html

/2014/02/how-nato-changed-perception-of-what.html

/2017/03/dossier-europe-and-military-affairs.html

 

 S O

defence_and_freedom@gmx.de

 

P.S.: The main purpose of NATO is clear to me.

.