{"id":27762,"date":"2014-09-10T10:35:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:35:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=27762"},"modified":"2014-09-10T10:35:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T14:35:08","slug":"natos-aim-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/09\/10\/natos-aim-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO&#8217;s &#8220;aim&#8221; problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/thediplomat.com\/2014\/09\/a-clausewitzian-view-of-nato\/\" target=\"_blank\">James Holmes<\/a> explains why &#8220;aim&#8221; isn&#8217;t good enough for NATO members:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Naval Diplomat is not from Missouri, America\u2019s Show-Me State. But I\u2019m in a show-me state of mind following last week\u2019s NATO summit in another Newport \u2014 Newport, Wales. Lofty words were said. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nato.int\/cps\/en\/natohq\/official_texts_112964.htm\" target=\"_blank\">summit communiqu\u00e9<\/a> pledges, for instance, to restore some sanity to defense spending.<\/p>\n<p>NATO long ago fixed the standard for defense spending at 2 percent of GDP. Few meet the standard, but at Newport the NATO-European powers put everyone on notice that they\u2019re really, truly serious about it. The small minority that already comply \u2014 Great Britain (for the moment) and Greece, alongside the United States \u2014 will \u201caim to continue to do so.\u201d The majority that don\u2019t vow to arrest further slippage. And they will \u201caim to increase defense expenditure in real terms as GDP grows,\u201d and \u201caim to move towards the 2% guideline within a decade,\u201d helping field viable forces.<\/p>\n<p><em>Aim<\/em> being the keyword \u2014 or, more accurately, the key diplomatic weasel word \u2014 in these passages. How many European allies will fulfill their commitment, and how many will avail themselves of the escape clause? Barry Pavel of the Atlantic Council <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defensenews.com\/article\/20140906\/DEFREG\/309060023\/NATO-Allies-Commit-Defense-Boost\" target=\"_blank\">observes charitably<\/a> that the uptick in budgets is \u201cnot going to happen across the entire alliance, but it\u2019s useful for framing incentives for some nations to start to contribute more.\u201d And that tepid prediction comes from someone who\u2019s presumably a NATO enthusiast.<\/p>\n<p>So let me get this straight. NATO-Europe resolutely promises to <em>try<\/em> \u2026 to build up to a level that barely qualifies as peacetime defense spending \u2026 over the next decade \u2026 if GDPs expand to permit it. Wow. As a matter of alliance management, think about the message the Newport communiqu\u00e9 telegraphs. To us in North America, it indicates that Europe sees itself inhabiting entirely tranquil surroundings, untroubled by anything like, say, Russian aggression against an Eastern European neighbor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>James Holmes explains why &#8220;aim&#8221; isn&#8217;t good enough for NATO members: The Naval Diplomat is not from Missouri, America\u2019s Show-Me State. But I\u2019m in a show-me state of mind following last week\u2019s NATO summit in another Newport \u2014 Newport, Wales. Lofty words were said. The summit communiqu\u00e9 pledges, for instance, to restore some sanity to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[62,5,13],"tags":[697,432,220],"class_list":["post-27762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-military","category-usa","tag-budget","tag-diplomacy","tag-nato"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7dM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762","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=27762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27763,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27762\/revisions\/27763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}