{"id":27695,"date":"2014-09-05T08:34:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T12:34:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27695"},"modified":"2018-01-15T17:27:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-15T22:27:32","slug":"nato-they-spent-all-their-money-on-buying-ferraris-and-now-they-have-no-gas-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/09\/05\/nato-they-spent-all-their-money-on-buying-ferraris-and-now-they-have-no-gas-money\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO &#8211; &#8220;they spent all their money on buying Ferraris and now they have no gas money&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.politico.com\/story\/2014\/09\/outlook-dim-north-atlantic-treaty-organization-reform-110519.html\" target=\"_blank\">Philip Ewing<\/a> reports on the chances of improved military &#8220;readiness&#8221; among the NATO allies:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With President Barack Obama in Europe this week for a major NATO summit, the White House hopes the growl of the Russian bear on Europe\u2019s eastern flank means the moment is right for some long-sought reforms to the alliance. But the outlook appears dim for anything beyond incremental steps at best.<\/p>\n<p>The major reason is one that has frustrated policymakers over the past several administrations: Most European nations would love a stouter defense structure \u2014 so long as they don\u2019t have to pay for it.<\/p>\n<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization requires that member nations devote at least 2 percent of their economies to defense spending, yet today only four do: the U.S., Britain, Greece and Estonia. Although this week\u2019s summit in Wales appears likely to yield a \u201cpledge\u201d in support of increased spending in the wake of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, no one expects a serious effort from members other than those most directly threatened, including Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Obama and U.S. officials also are focused on bolstering European military \u201creadiness,\u201d particularly as U.S. spending declines. NATO relies on the U.S. for critical military capabilities such as surveillance, in-flight refueling and transportation. European militaries field top-rate troops, ships and aircraft but keep only weeks\u2019 or even days\u2019 worth of munitions on hand. In NATO\u2019s 2011 campaign against Libya, many nations ran out of munitions and the French began dropping concrete bombs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sort of like they spent all their money on buying Ferraris and now they have no gas money,\u201d Benitez said. \u201cThere are many allies that literally aren\u2019t flying their planes because they can\u2019t afford to. They have very advanced fleets, but their fleets aren\u2019t leaving port because they can\u2019t afford to.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Philip Ewing reports on the chances of improved military &#8220;readiness&#8221; among the NATO allies: With President Barack Obama in Europe this week for a major NATO summit, the White House hopes the growl of the Russian bear on Europe\u2019s eastern flank means the moment is right for some long-sought reforms to the alliance. But the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,5,1119,13],"tags":[697,220,726],"class_list":["post-27695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-military","category-russia","category-usa","tag-budget","tag-nato","tag-ukraine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7cH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27696,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27695\/revisions\/27696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}