Trump administration is pushing NATO countries to increase military spending, often to the benefit of weapons manufacturers like Boeing. The push for military spending comes as Acting Pentagon Chief Patrick Shanahan is under investigation for improperly advocating on behalf of Boeing, where he worked for 30 years. Meanwhile, the Pentagon blocked delivery of F-35 fighter jets to NATO member country Turkey, because it refused to back down on buying an anti-aircraft system from Russia. The U.S. Air Force has suspended deliveries of Boeing’s KC-46 Pegasus tanker over safety concerns.
Joe Cirincione talking:
The debate on NATO is dominated by this obsession over the 2% solution, that somehow what we need to do is get all the European countries to spend 2% of their economic output on defense, as if this is going to—as if this is needed or is going to fix our problems. But this is out of touch with reality. The European countries, by themselves, spend about $240 billion every year on military weapons and forces. They outspend Russia four to one. Russia spends about $66 billion each year. So they are spending plenty on defense.
This idea that we have to get them to spend more weakens NATO, not strengthens it, because it diverts resources from things like, for example, settlement of migrations—of migrants, one of the issues that has been roiling Europe over the last few years, or the basic health and welfare and education of their population, another economic dislocation issue that does more to undermine NATO than any military threat.
And why is this happening, you ask? Well, I think it is a push from the defense contractors. Boeing is one of the top five defense contractors in the United Staes, in the world, and it benefits from increases in defense spending. So we should be questioning whether we need to spend more money at all on this, and what we’re spending. Do we have shortfalls in NATO? Yes, we do. But we can fix those by spending more wisely, not by spending more.
The United States still keeps about 150 hydrogen bombs stationed in Europe. These are vestiges of the Cold War. We used to have thousands. The Republican administration under George W. Bush actually pulled out hundreds, but the Obama administration was afraid to pull out the remaining 150.
So, what are we doing with those weapons? Well, it turns out we’re spending $10 billion to modernize these weapons, to put new tail kits on them, make them more accurate for use. Who is benefiting from that contract? Boeing. Boeing makes the tail kits for these B-61s. So we’re giving Boeing billions of dollars to modernize an obsolete weapon that we will never use, that we do not need.
This is the kind of wasteful spending that’s going on in NATO, and that the focus is distorting what we really need to do to build up a NATO, to solidify the alliance. It’s not about money. The biggest problem NATO faces is the president of the United States, who keeps putting in doubt U.S. commitment to the alliance, who keeps putting in doubt whether the U.S. will come to the aid of NATO allies if they’re attacked. This is the biggest issue, not how much we spend.
this is a bipartisan obsession, this 2% solution. I think the president is using this as a stick to hit the NATO allies. President Trump is the first president since World War II who does not see himself as a leader of the Western alliance, does not see himself as a leader of NATO. He looks at our European allies as economic rivals. So he wants to use this issue to hit them over the head, because, in essence, and this is his—if there’s such a thing as a Trump policy or Trump doctrine, it’s this. He doesn’t believe in alliances. He doesn’t want the European countries to be united. He would prefer the United States deal with each country individually, because he believes we have a greater advantage.
So, the fear in NATO—and this is what the secretary general was trying to assuage in his visit here this week—is not that the Europeans aren’t spending enough on defense. It’s that the U.S. is pulling back, that the U.S., who founded NATO, is reneging on its commitments. And President Trump, every day, every time he talks about NATO, does something to increase those fears.
John Bolton is a serial arms control killer. He has never believed in arms control, negotiated solutions to weapons. So he’s the hidden hand behind President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, the treaty that Ronald Reagan negotiated to pull out, to get rid of nuclear weapons that we were stationing in Europe, what they called intermediate-range nuclear weapons. He never liked the treaty, when it was negotiated. He’s in favor of more weapons, not less. And because we’re killing the treaty, the U.S.—guess what—is now set to build a new ground-launched cruise missile that could be placed in Europe. The nuclear arms race is back in Europe, largely because of John Bolton.
we’re cursed in this discussion by a very narrow definition of national security. We’ve all come to accept that national security equals military forces and weapons, when, in fact, as you point out, a national security is more often determined by the health and welfare of its citizenry, the system of justice, whether citizens feel that they’re engaged in the country and have a role in the governance of that country. And spending on military is just one small part of national security, but this has become the test of whether a country is carrying its fair burden. So, burden sharing with NATO countries has been an issue in this town for decades. Republicans and Democrats have both harped on it, because it’s kind of an easy way for them to show that they’re tough, that they’re strong.
But let’s put this in perspective. What are we talking about here? The world as a whole, every year, spends about $1.7 trillion on military weapons and forces. One-point-seven. The United States and our NATO allies account for $1 trillion of that. So more than half of all global spending is spent by the United States and our NATO allies. The NATO allies alone account for about $240 billion. That’s what they spend. What are they spending it to guard against? Well, if you think that Russia is the main threat, Russia only spends about $66 billion every year on defense. In fact, its spending dropped by 20% between 2016 and 2017, the last year we have figures for. So, its spending is going down.
So why this demand for the NATO allies to spend more, when they’re beset with all kinds of problems that have nothing to do with military, all kinds of internal, economic, immigration problems, social justice problems, health and welfare problems? Why? Well, one, it’s simple. The 2% solution, it’s a simple mantra that is repeated. And, two, this directly benefits military contractors.
Who makes the money off of this? Well, most of the money that we spend in this country on defense, and that the Europeans spend, go to a relative handful of defense contractors: Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, etc. And they lobby incessantly for these kind of increases, in Washington, in NATO headquarters, in the capitals of Europe.
And now we have the absurd situation where a 31-year veteran of Boeing, a corporate executive, Patrick Shanahan, is the acting secretary of defense. I mean, this is such an obvious conflict of interest, you would think that people would say, “Well, no, you can’t do that.” But, of course, this is Trump’s Washington, where oil industry executives are running the EPA, and pharmaceutical companies run the FDA, so it’s become accepted. But it’s not right. It’s not fair. And it distorts us.
And it’s dangerous. Just one last fact: If you take Trump at his word that he wants them to contribute 4%, well, that means you want Europe to double their defense spending, from about $230 billion to $460 billion. For what? To do what? What does this go towards? We’ve lost track of the real security needs we face, and we’ve become obsessed with spending more and more on military weapons that in fact have only a minor role to play in the national security of a country.
The actual figures are not quite as rosy as the secretary general states. For example, Germany has slightly increased its defense spending, but it’s not going to come anywhere close to 2%. So it’s technically true, but it’s—what he’s basically doing is trying to come and repair the rift in the NATO alliance that President Trump has caused. This is not a European problem; this is an American problem. The president of the United States is causing this division, almost unprecedented in the 70 of NATO history.
So this is why he wanted to come. And it is—it’s very—I don’t think a secretary general has ever addressed a joint session of Congress. And he’s coming because the European allies are worried about the health of the alliance, not primarily because of defense spending, but because—about the attitudes and policies and temperament of the president of the United States. So he’s going directly to Congress to solidify these ties. And in the course of that, he’s trying to appease the president by saying, “Yes, Mr. President, your demand for increased spending is happening.” He’s stroking Trump, the way, unfortunately, our allies have come to believe they have to do in order to maintain good ties.
Was it successful? It was successful. But, unfortunately, I think, in so doing, he feeds into the military spending frenzy that has seized Congress. He got—when he made that statement, he got a standing ovation. Democrats and Republicans stood up and applauded more defense spending.
And this is what’s happening in this country. The president has submitted a budget for $750 billion for military spending—$750 billion—a big jump from the approximately $720 [billion] that we were spending last year. What do the Democrats do? They say, “Well, we’re not going to give you $750 [billion]. We offer $736 [billion].” That’s their plan, $736 [billion]. So, both Republicans and Democrats, unfortunately, are feeding into this frenzy to spend more and more on weapons, at the expense of domestic expenditures.
All the arrows are pointing in the wrong direction, so nuclear storm clouds are gathering. For example, John Bolton, the national security adviser, has been very successful in sabotaging talks with North Korea. The one benefit of the Trump presidency might be that he could negotiate a solid deal with Kim Jong-un. It now appears, according to reports this week, that at the Hanoi summit John Bolton sabotaged those talks by presenting a list of unacceptable demands, an all-or-nothing offer to the North Koreans that caused them to call off the talks.
He has killed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty. This is a Ronald Reagan treaty, that successfully pulled out and destroyed 3,000 nuclear weapons from Europe. You may have been covering this in the ’80s, Amy. When we were pouring nuclear weapons into Europe, massive demonstrations. The biggest rift in the NATO alliance until this point was that crisis. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated a treaty. Bolton never liked it. He killed it.
And why did he kill it? He used the excuse of a Russian violation, which I believe is real but the kind of thing that can be fixed within the treaty framework. And what—but why did they kill it? Because there are elements in the U.S. military and the defense industry that want to build new nuclear weapons that were prohibited by that treaty, to deploy against China and to put into Europe.
So, weeks after we announced we were withdrawing from the treaty, it was revealed that the Department of Defense is starting manufacturing, research and development and production of a new ground-launched cruise missile, a so-called GLCM. You may remember this phrase from the ’80s. It was GLCMs and Pershing IIs that we were pouring into Europe. And so, Secretary General Stoltenberg sought to assure the Congress that NATO would not accept a new intermediate nuclear forces nuclear weapon in Europe.
So Bolton is doing this a little cleverly. It’s like a Trojan horse. It’s going to be a conventionally armed ground-launched cruise missile, a conventionally armed GLCM, that will go into Europe, perhaps in the next couple of years. But, of course, you can easily swap out the conventional warhead for a nuclear warhead. So I think they’re planning to put these weapons in to avoid the kind of mass demonstrations, and later, possibly, equip them with nuclear weapons.
This is the kind of Cold War policy that we thought was behind us. We thought the arms race was over. It’s not over. We are in a new arms race. Every single nuclear-armed country is building new nuclear weapons and heading towards a confrontation point. You’ve got to be a real optimist to think that you can keep thousands of nuclear weapons in fallible human hands indefinitely and something terrible is not going to happen. I am very worried about the direction of the arms race, the direction of our policies.
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Joe Cirincione
president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is the author of Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late and Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.
— source democracynow.org | Apr 05, 2019