The economy and the population of the EU are greater than those of the US. Taking away non-NATO members does not reduce that by much. Adding in Non-EU members of NATO evens it even further. So the relative military weakness of NATO is not a question of economics or population figures. It has a lot to with political will and differing senses of threats and how to deal with those threats. The EU members of NATO also have other problems to deal with.

Indeed the Western European members have cut their defense expenditures since the end of the Cold War. They also continue to cut them, on average, as the US increased its expenditures vastly from the events of 9/11 to the end of 2010 by 81 percent. However, that average cut by the Europeans needs to be looked at with greater fidelity. The UK increased its expenditures since 2001 to 2010 by 22 percent. France increased its expenditures by just 3 percent. Germany reduced its expenditures by 3 percent. Italy dropped theirs by close to 6 percent. See: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/factsheet2010, for example. (Recent economic events in the region, however, have pushed cuts in the UK and others.)

If we take out the defense expenditures of China the defense expenditures of the US would equal the defense expenditures of all other countries in the world combined. It is about 43 percent of all defense expenditures in the world. China is just about 7 percent, but that is another story.

Some may question the huge increases in defense expenditures of the US over the last few years and how the overall costs of the recent wars will linger as something of a drag on the US economy for some time to come. But one thing is quite clear: given the massive and increasing debts of the US, and we are about to begin a vital debate on increasing the debt limit beyond $14.3 trillion dollars (which is not much smaller than out entire GDP), the US will not be able to keep these massive expenditures increasing. There is considerable political and economic pressure to haul back on defense expenditures and it has already begun.

The US will need to have a very serious debate about where it will be spending the taxpayers’ money in the future. Clearly the biggest federal expenditures by far are for entitlements and the most difficult one to deal with is Medicare. Social Security can find its solution in fairly simple mathematics with some tough political decisions backing them up. If anyone has any doubts about the massive problems we face on our federal budgets in the future and what they may mean for defense see some of the very good work of the Concord Coalition at: http://www.concordcoalition.org/.

Will there be massive pressure to cut mostly discretionary expenditures such as defense, education, roads, etc.? Yes. Politically these sorts of discretionary cuts are more likely than the more needed mandatory cuts given the dysfunctional nature of some of the political leadership.

But eventually, after many discretionary expenditures are gutted it will become clear that all of that cutting did not do much given the massive present and expected increases in mandatory expenditures, such as Social Security and Medicare. Look out folks. It is either cut and cut more, or start paying a hugely increasing tax bill, which may send the economy into long term stagnancy that we can ill afford.

The gigantic debts of some of the non-US NATO members, such as Greece, Spain and Italy are looming financial time bombs for the EU and NATO, and, frankly, the world. Much of the essentially bad debt of these even more profligate countries is owned by German, French and other EU-NATO banks. The bailouts that have already occurred could pale beside what might happen if this is not taken care of.

Many of the European members of NATO have quite a lot more concerns than buying weapons and getting into wars. The publics of these countries seem far more interested in the security of their jobs, if they have them, and getting a job, if they don’t have one. The unemployment rates of Spain and Portugal are shocking. Recent referendums in Italy have shown that the politics there are not exactly focused in military issues. The street demonstrators in Spain recently were not asking to increase defense expenditures.

There will be pressures all around in NATO countries to cut defense expenditures and to much more carefully decide what military actions to get involved with. There is a lot of debate in the EU and in the US about the wisdom of NATO and our involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are massively expensive. The costs of the Global War on Terrorism are far from insignificant:http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RL33110.pdf.

If one includes medical care and other benefits to the veterans of these wars, interest expenditure on the borrowed money to pay for these wars, and lost GDP due to sending investments and R&D in the directions of these wars and so forth the costs of these to $2-3 trillion. See http://www.amazon.com/Three-Trillion-Dollar-War-Conflict/dp/0393067017 for example. There are lots of cost estimates out there. All of them point to massive costs in dollars.

However, we cannot forget those who have died and have been injured and their lives and their lives of their families and friends damaged. How do we calculate that cost of these wars? I salute them all.

I am far from a pacifist, but some things are very clear:

All of NATO and the US are at a crossroads when it comes to their foreign military and foreign policy purposes in the future. And that future will likely have far tighter economic and political constraints than now. It is a matter of simple math once again. Our profligacy in the past will limit our options in the future. It is time to smell the coffee, wake up, and start figuring out how we can actually improve our security on less.

As far as I can tell, no one disagrees with anything Secretary Gates said in Brussels, although many question his motives as well as the wisdom of the policies that have led to the sorry state of the Alliance’s military capabilities. NATO and it s continental counterpart, the European Union, does not spend enough on defense, spends in unwisely, acts with all the hesitation, indecision and backbiting of any alliance and cannot perform any but the simplest military maneuvers without the United States. As Gates himself pointed out, he is but the latest in a long line of U.S. officials to point out that the Alliance is not meeting its public defense commitments. This saga has been ongoing since the 1960s.

It is clear that with a defense budget around $400 billion Europe could buy a lot of defense capabilities were it so inclined and structured. The problem is that it spends on the wrong things. Too many people, too much infrastructure and too much redundancy. Europe does not need three tactical fighter programs, all of which were obsolescent before the first aircraft came off the production line. The same is the case in shipbuilding, artillery, armored vehicles and small arms.

In addition, many in the Alliance made the choice at the end of the Cold War not just to reduce defense spending and downsize their militaries but to restructure them in favor of so-called peacekeeping and nation building missions. Not only did this favor personnel over equipment but it also led to under investment in critical enablers, particularly those relevant to actual combat operations. So, as the Secretary noted, our allies lack the ISR, lift, tankers, logistics, targeting specialists, and maintainers with which to conduct even a small, sparse and simple air operation such as Libya. As the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya all demonstrate, if you are not prepared for war, you cannot be successful at peacekeeping.

Absent the rise of a so-called existential threat, there is no chance that European nations either will add to their defense budgets or reform how and on what they spend defense resources. As the Secretary pointed out, the two-tiered alliance is a reality. Even stalwarts such as the U.K. are being forced to ratchet back their defense spending and to cancel, mothball or retire critical military capabilities including aircraft carriers, strike aircraft, surveillance systems and armored units.

Gates is right, insofar as the issue is the continuing relevance of the Alliance, that NATO must figure out how to get more out of its shrinking pot of defense funds. His remarks appear to suggest that those countries which have invested in U.S. capabilities, such as F-16s and F-18s (and by extension the F-35) will have a better chance of retaining military relevance. This may reflect the ability of those same countries to take advantage of U.S.-generating training methods, logistics and maintenance procedures and commonality in tactics.

But the real issue for the United States is how to respond to the progressive military irrelevance of the NATO alliance? NATO is dying. It suffers from one of those chronic wasting diseases that leave the victim conscious, perhaps even verbal, but increasingly incapable of meaningful functions and even movement. This does not mean we should pull the plug. The Alliance is still operational and relevant in Afghanistan. It continues to conduct air operations over Libya, although the events of the last two months lead one to wonder what would have been the consequences of a European decision to use military force directly to oust Ghadaffi?

But the prognosis delivered by Gates is dire. The course of the disease well documented. The outcome is all but inevitable. The time of the NATO Alliance is over.

So what comes after NATO? For the United States the demise of the Alliance as an institution with disposable military capabilities has three implications. First, the United States needs to take on board the critical lesson to be garnered from Europe’s military decline. This is to spend only on critical military capabilities, those relevant to the conduct of war. So stop spending on the chimera of nation building and peacekeeping. Protect investments on critical capabilities such as the F-35, missile defense, nuclear attack submarines, long-range strike, and nuclear forces. To that should be added critical enablers including unmanned aerial systems, antisubmarine warfare, electronic warfare, tankers and tactical lift aircraft and helicopters.

Second, Europe is right in reducing its defense spending insofar as there are no serious threats to the Continent, perhaps with the sole exception of ballistic missiles out of the Middle East. Accepting the European point of view, the United States should shift the focus of its military deployments and investments to theaters of relevance, specifically East Asia and the Middle East. This means also doing what is necessary to assist allies in those regions to defend themselves better. Sell F-16s to Taiwan, F-35s to Israel, Japan and even South Korea and expand missile defense deployments in both regions.

Finally, the United States needs to look at ways of expanding its relationships with like-minded and friendly states in regions of interest and concern. India clearly comes to mind. Of late there has been a major expansion in U.S.-Indian security ties and in arms sales by Washington to New Delhi. In addition to the current sales of C-17s, C-130Js and P-8s to India, there are possibilities for sales of the F-35, Stryker armored vehicle and the Littoral Combat Ship. The United States should also expand defense ties with Australia, Singapore, Indonesia and even explore such relations with Vietnam.

Perhaps unwittingly, although I doubt it, Secretary Gates delivered a eulogy to NATO. Now we must address the question what after NATO?

I offered assessments and interpretations of current Euro--American relations in the form of a set of terse propositions. They are presented as a DESCRIPTION of this multifacted reality. I said nothing explicit as to what sort of relationship I'd prefer or why. My conception of a healthy relationship that effectively meets the interest of most parties (as the wider world community as well) is based on a qualified form of multilateralism such as already exists in the realm of commercial relations. The US would remain primus inte paris as regards hard security matters, but: 1) we would forego many of our presumptions to define problems and dictate a course of action as we now do with minima if any true consultation with allies. We should not 'burden sharing' in the sense of our expecting an uncritical, open-ended commitment to doing our bidding when and how we ask for it. (We spurned their post-9/11 offer to render assistance and instead chose unilateralism in setting in motion the counter-productive war on terror). Testing our judgment and policy preferences against the judgment of allies and taking seriously their ideas is very much to our advantage. Over the past decade, our judgment has been disasterous - on Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and - lest we forget - our dogmatic propogation of a market fundamentalist vision of a finmancially dominated global economy that nearly brought us all to ruin and may yet do so.

In brief, one can accept my vision of the Euro-American relationship should work without any prior policy preferences or appraisals of thedistribution of wisdom - as, admittedly, i just made. In other words. The mosud operandi of the lliance and what policies we wish to see emanate from it are quite distinct.

"That truth should NOT obscure the likelihood that the navy and air force are probably going to be the mainstays of American defense for decades." Sorry

NATO was "purpose built" to serve as a barrier to Soviet expansionism in Europe. The USSR is long dead and gone. Russia is only a rumor of a threat. Is France still fearful of Germany? I think not. Is Portugal fearful of Morocco? Doubtful. Why does NATO exist?

It exists to serve as as "janissary" force for the conduct of US foreign policy.

Europe has no credible military enemies as threats. Europe is threatened by financial insolvency and the possibility of cultural inundation from Africa and former Muslim colonies of the "metropoles." Those threats have little to do with the ability to send and sustain conventional military forces to distant lands inhabited by strange and hostile peoples who prefer their own benighted folkways.

Terrorism? You want to call this threat a war situation? Fine, but it is a war best fought with police, intelligence agencies and counter-terrorist commandos, not with conventional armies that dimly comprehend COIN but talk about it endlessly. NATO knows that the armies that the US want them all to maintain are not relevant to their own problems.

The argument is made that intelligence will not be available against CT threats if one does not occupy and dominate the ground with massive forces. This is not true. Having conducted clandestine HUMINT operations in COIN situations, I will state clearly that recruiting sources depends on skill, not dominant force.

The US as a true global power must maintain ground forces with balanced capabilities as well as CT forces second to none. That truth should obscure the likelihood that the navy and air force are probably going to be the mainstays of American defense for decades.

NATO? We still have that?

Secretary Gates' comments about the need for our European allies to shoulder more of the defense burden are not completely off the mark, but for a variety of reasons are unhelpful, coming as they do at a time when that simply is not going to happen for financial reasons and many of our NATO allies are in the midst of stretching their militaries to the limits to accomplish goals shared by the United States.

It is quite true that quite a number of European NATO member states reached economic levels of recovery following the devastation of the Second World War consistent with taking on more of the burden of European defense and even more power projection beyond that 30-40 years ago in the midst of the Cold War. However, the US tended to accept a more burdensome role than appropriate in part because it wished to call the shots and felt it could better execute, in a variety of respects, the overall mission encompassing both strategic and tactical defense against potential Soviet aggression in any case. Consequently, at a time when pressing hard for more European defense expenditure probably made more sense, Washington was insufficiently insistent on greater European participation.

The United States also significantly underestimated the drain in budgetary terms of assuming such a dominant role in European defense, especially as the US embarked on severely costly and relatively unilateral commitments such as the Vietnam War. The fiscal burden of addressing huge challenges embracing strategic nuclear deterrence and the maintenance of an overwhelmingly US global naval capability arrayed primarily against the Soviet Union and other perceived Communist threats proved steadily more crushing, contributing to ominously ballooning US deficits.

In parallel, this situation left the Europeans insufficiently unprepared to take on enough of the burden of addressing varied global challenges such as the first Persian Gulf War and the Bosnian crisis in the post-Cold War era as well as Afghanistan in the post-9/11 context. Even prior to that, the extent to which some European capabilities had deteriorated was demonstrated rather graphically when the UK struggled so hard to cope with a challenge as relatively limited as the 1982 Falklands War. And the massively wasteful US diversion into Iraq fairly shortely after 9/11 vastly magnified the problem of parallel American overstretch.

Since then, the global economic crisis beginning in 2008 has rendered it practically impossible for a number of European states to shift to heavier defense spending. Indeed, with groaning economies (some even quite desperate), many are unable to maintain even their current levels of military activity. With that in mind, this is hardly the time to increase trans-Atlantic tensions by way of a US call for significantly larger European contributions to global defense.

Finally, with the UK, France and other NATO allies currently assuming the lion's share of the collective effort against the Libyan regime, such criticism is especially inappropriate. One can easily imagine the resentment in those countries providing not only such a hefty commitment to the Libyan mission, but also having done so in Afghanistan for years now.

Once upon a time, in the heady days of the Cold War when everything about security seemed clear to everyone (even if it wasn't) and the Soviets looked like the worst menace available, it was possible to wrangle over who paid for what and how much they ought to spend.

This is not the Cold War anymore. So the "burdensharing" issue is miscast, simply available as a cudgel for everyone from the right (Carafano) to the left (Brenner) to use to beat up on the "feckless" Europeans. Even Barney Frank, who wants to cut the US defense budget, beats up on the Europeans.

The underlying reality for the Europeans is not their mismanaged economic policies, pace brother Carifano. (The Germans are doing better economically than we are right now, and they are certainly a target of this kind of American bomb-throwing about the defense burden.)

The reality is that the "threats" to global security are not seen the same way across the pond. Certainly the Europeans are concerned about the risk of terrorist attacks on their own countries. But they view this problem more as a law enforcement/intelligence issue than one at which they should throw military forces, unlike the United States. And they do not agree that a global war on such organizations is either smart or necessary.

They have come to see the risk of attack from the Middle East (read Iran) using longer range missiles as a potential threat, but have in mind a more sophisticated mix of diplomatic and defensive capabilities in mind as a response, rather than a significant military buildup.

Many Europeans (not all) have an interest in stability and responsive governance in the Mediterranean and near Africa, but do not find it necessary to expend significant shares of national wealth to become a global constabulary, unlike the US military's burgeoning commitment to global COIN operations.

The Europeans benefit from the US nuclear deterrent, but, one has to ask, against what adversary today should they be spending $50 billion a year maintaining, operating, and modernizing nuclear forces?

Let's be fair. European budgets are challenged with many priorities - aging populations, social programs, infrastructure, energy, immigration. Defense budgets are part of national budgets, so they inevitably are calculated no only in relationship to strategy and challenges, but also to national priorities and resources.

Strange as it may seem, American budgets are also challenged with many priorities - social programs, rising medical costs (higher per capita here than in Europe, with a delivery of medical services of a quality that now falls well below the Europeans), energy, infrastructure, immigration, among other things. And a profound debt/deficit crisis, as well.

And defense budgets are part of those budgets, which means, as everyone from many Tea Party advocates to the incoming Secretary of Defense, that they are part of the resource allocation process we will go through this year and the next few, where policy and funding priorities are reset and defense resources decline.

So, enough Europe bashing. Nobody is holy here, and there are serious differences of view across the Atlantic both about the nature of the challenges and the resources and strategies needed to deal with them. Cheap shots at the Europeans don't help resolve these differences; they just provided a short-term "feel good" to the accusers.

I am so over the Gates “truth to power” farewell tour. I might have been impressed by his haranguing of NATO if it had been the culmination of a four year campaign rather than remarks made when the Pentagon was just something to see in his rear view mirror.

Furthermore, Gates glossed over the real issue. NATO countries are not spending enough on defense because they can’t because they have screwed up their economies so much with high taxes and unsustainable government programs that they can’t afford to defend themselves. The problem here is that the US is on track to become like the rest of NATO. At the pace we are going we could take defense spending to zero now and we’ll still go broke if government keeps spending at the pace it is on. (Panetta was right in his confirmation hearings when he said defense was not the root of America’s economic ills.)

Gates speech also came off as a massive blast of ingratitude. Yes, the Europeans are under funding defense, but they are also fighting side by side with us in Afghanistan and some have taken proportionally higher casualties than the US. Meanwhile, Obama dumped Libya on NATO and then Gates kicks our NATO allies—that is gratitude for you.

Secretary Gates has become the Bart Simpson of national security…anything that goes wrong after he leaves office he will be the first person to jump up and say “I didn’t do it.”

Sadly Gates’ comments will resonate most strongly with the dump NATO, gut defense, and bring the boys home choir.

The US is in NATO because the alliance is in our interests. The US has bases in Europe because they provide a platform that gets us halfway to defending our interests. If we did not have those and other bases around the world we would need twice as many planes, ships, and troops to do the same mission and it would take longer to get them there.

Denigrating the support our allies do provide, focusing on the wrong problem, and being more concerned with legacy speeches than national security is not the hallmark of great statesmanship.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ recent blunt remarks regarding NATO members’ defense spending were the strongest I recall hearing and occur at precisely the moment when the United States military leadership has expressed concerns about the US economy as the basis of our military power and the future of US power projection.

The saying that nations have interests, not friends, becomes more true during periods of high threat, military, economic or diplomatic. When a nation’s territory, autonomy or prosperity is threatened by a combination of the three basic components of national power, the interests calculus goes under close scrutiny. This calculus works hard to discern between those interests that are vital and those that play a lesser role. Vital interests will typically get a whole of nation response, while mere interests bring in the risk/cost/benefit analysis.

Europe and NATO are about at the close scrutiny point on interests. And so is the United States.

The only wolf at the NATO door is the economy of the members of the alliance and the members of the European Union as they affect NATO members.

The United States is currently involved in two expensive conflicts that are hard to place in the vital national interest category, as evidenced by the current US administration’s willingness to tinker with troop levels in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Were those conflicts in the vital category, the President would restrict his involvement to the grand design category (e.g., the decision to invade North Africa first, Europe later made by President Roosevelt). Rather today, the decision to be made seems to center on how many thousands of troops to withdraw. Afghanistan is therefore not a vital national interest to the United States and is subject to the rules of risk/cost/benefit analysis.

This logic drives NATO analysis as well, both in their contribution to our effort in Afghanistan and to desired excess military capacity.

Absent a real threat, and today, Europe does not have a real threat against national sovereignty aside from energy pressure Russia may apply, notably through Germany, a nation will seek to determine what capability it wants to maintain. A capabilities based analysis will reveal the result of the nation’s cost/benefit analysis and the level of risk it is willing to tolerate. All the while conscious of the value of any alliances that bear on the problem.

European leaders have no political will. European leaders’ deference to, and dependence on the United States for strategy, direction and diplomacy over the past 65 years has denatured them. American leaders prefer that their European counterparts defer to them while refraining from exercising their authority to decide and to act autonomously.

Europe collectively lacks unity. This is a convenient justification for passive acceptance of the condition noted above.

Washington views the Europeans as auxiliaries who are expected to properly equip themselves for errands that the United States directs them to perform. The latter’s hesitancy for reasons of timidity, prudence or domestic politics irritates American leaders mightily.

This state of affairs will not change. Overall, it satisfies the United States. Overall, it satisfies the Europeans. The psychological dimension of this warped relationship is more important than the structural. The dynamics of a classic dominant/subordinate relationship is too deeply rooted in the attitudes, mentality and feelings of political classes on both sides of the Atlantic. The United States’ reinforces them by holding over the Europeans’ heads the dread prospect of reverting to quasi-isolationism. That existential threat is hovering presence – felt but not heard – over every NATO assembly. It registers because Europe’s political class is deeply scared by the prospect of being on their own in the world.

From my weekly Constitution column:

"Nowhere in the North Atlantic Charter will there be found any commitment to nation-building, any asserted right to intervene in civil wars in non-allied states - or even allied states, for that matter - or any claimed responsibility to protect third-world citizens from the depredations of their own governments...[Instead], the ineptitude complained of by Mr. Gates is our allies' failure to pony up the military resources necessary to perform just such unchartered missions.

Those allies now find themselves running out of precision munitions that we are forced to resupply at outrageous and unbudgeted expense, or watch collapse an effort to which we never should have acceded in the first place.

All in all, it's hard to decide which of us really has been the more feckless."