Thursday, September 14, 2006
National defense as social welfare
The European Parliament has issued a report on the "efficiency" of Europe's defense spending. I'm not sure precisely what this paragraph means, but it doesn't seem very good:
A new report commissioned by the European Parliament's security and defence subcommittee estimates that although EU governments spend half (€250bn) the amount Americans spend on defence, their defence capacities are only about 10 percent as efficient as the US.
I wish I could say that this were surprising.
It seems to me that the "inefficiency" of European capacities has at least two implications for analysts of America's national security.
First, compared to other wealthy, capitalist democracies that have voters to appease, the American Department of Defense may actually be doing a pretty good job. Much as it is fashionable to complain about waste in defense spending, it sounds as though we are doing well in comparison to our fairest benchmark. That may be a "best hockey player in Ecuador" standard, but relative efficiency is relative efficiency, and it should not be entirely discounted. Our guys may be more careful with a buck than we popularly suppose.
Second, the European Union has obviously become so inefficient in its defense spending that its armies may not actually be useful for much more than peacekeeping. Notwithstanding the bleating from John Kerry and others about getting help from our "traditional allies," we may not lose much by being on the wrong side of the Euros. If the entire non-American wing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization cannot agree to cough up an extra 2,500 soldiers when its own commander is begging for them, you know that Europe's armies are so hollow they have an echo.
3 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Sep 14, 06:53:00 PM:
The EU wants to develop its own collective military arm. Now they are not supporting NATO commitments they have previously made. This must call into question the whole future of NATO as a viable military alliance. Can the demise of NATO be far off?
By 
Assistant Village Idiot, at
Thu Sep 14, 07:26:00 PM:
Leaning Anglosphere is where we are going to have to go. As ticked as we might get at trying to negotiate Canada into joining us for defense in more than the abstract, it's a heckuva lot more promising than trying to get something out of France and Belgium.
I mean "anglosphere" in a fairly expansive sense, BTW. While I would obviously be including US, UK, Oz, NZ, and Canada, I have in mind India and Japan, as well the non-EU countries of Norway and Iceland.
By , at
Sat Sep 16, 11:05:00 PM:
"Second, the European Union has obviously become so inefficient in its defense spending that its armies may not actually be useful for much more than peacekeeping."
Will they even be useful for that? Whilst they are arguably still more disciplined than the Third World thugs issued guns and called soldiers, and whilst can be maintained that such humiliating failures as Srebenica were the fault of cowardly governments rather than being due to any fault in the troops deployed, it is still incontestable that Euro-armies have rarely if ever seen the elephant in recent decades.
