Is Europe free-riding on American defense spending?
As someone sympathetic to the argument that they are (or at least were, during the Cold War) the Economist's Democracy in America blog sets the record straight:
'Defence spending by Britain and France is around 2.5% of their GDP, which is about the world average. This is interesting in that neither Britain nor France, nor any other country in Western Europe, faces any conceivable territorial military threat. German defence spending is considerably lower, but (as Charlemagne noted in a 2008 column) it still fields the only other serious expeditionary force in Europe. In any case, Germany faces no military threat either, nor has there been any serious likelihood of military conflict anywhere in the region since the Yugoslavian wars wound down. The only European countries that face any risk of military conflict in the coming decades are those that border Russia, and indeed the Baltics are increasing their military spending; one could vaguely imagine Poland getting into a dicey situation someday (a blow-up involving Estonia's Russian-speaking minority leads to Russian intervention and Warsaw begins feeling the heat, or something), but it's a stretch, and Poland, too, is increasing its military spending to almost 2% of GDP.America, for its own reasons, has decided to spend 4.7% of its GDP on its armed forces and on warfighting. But why should Europe match that? For the sake of comparison: India and Pakistan are actual nuclear-armed enemies with disputed territorial claims and huge armies facing each other across a hostile border. Each country is fighting active counterinsurgency campaigns inside its own territory. Yet Pakistan spends 3% of GDP on its military, while India spends just 2.5%, about as much as France. The world abounds in countries that enjoy no American security guarantees, yet spend no more than France does on defence: Brazil, Chile, Vietnam, South Africa, Nigeria, Ukraine, even, by some accounts, Iran. These countries are clearly not "free riding" on America; why should Europe be?
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A fair point indeed. I think the GDP gap we see between the U.S. and other states is what we could probably call the "hegemony gap" - America spends nearly double what other industrial powers spend to sustain superiority around the world. Where the "free riding" claim comes in is not simply that we're spending extra money but that we're putting our military to use doing things - like keeping sea lanes open - that others benefit from but do not pay for. I think this claim about providing global goods as a justification for our large defense budget doesn't hold nearly as much water as it used to. And in any event, as the world's largest economy, it's in our over-riding interest to keep commerce flowing.
So the Economists' fundamental point strikes me as valid: the U.S. could spend less on defense and still be quite safe.
(AP Photos)