What Part of "Super Power" Is Unclear

If alliance defense equity is your goal, slashing American defenses would achieve that

While I fully appreciate and share the frustration that motivates it, this pie chart is about as relevant to our national security as a COEXIST bumper sticker. If all America had to do was protect the continental United States, our spending would be lower, too.

America has global security interests to defend the world we built after World War II that benefits America. And thinking about Europe alone, it is in America’s vital national security interests to keep Europe out of a hostile power's control:

And last but not least, while calling the Atlantic Ocean the “anti-European moat” is amusing, it is also accurate, reflecting a vital American interest. Not against Europeans, many of whom are our friends and allies. But against a hostile power that controls the economic, scientific, demographic, and military potential of Europe.

If the Atlantic functions as our moat, we’ve effed up because that means an enemy is in control of Europe to the extent it can attack us across the figurative moat that is our last line of defense. The homeland is not secure if an enemy can use the Atlantic as a highway to strike us. That’s the foundation of why we waged war in Europe during World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. And preventing that threat from arising after the so-called “end of history” is still a reason to remain a leader in NATO to keep our Great Wall in Europe intact. Consider the threats to North America that have arisen from Europe[.]

As for spending, America has advanced technology to kill enemies and keep troops alive, lots of nukes, strategic mobility assets, well trained personnel, ISR assets, and the ability to sustain our air, naval, and ground forces in combat anywhere. What should we do without? What enemy would be deterred if our military was great—but limited to North America with occasional convoys to American overseas territory?

Right now, Europeans don't spend as much collectively. But they are finally reaching spending-burden objectives for 2024 first set in 2014. Some surpass it. And surpass our burden. They also have many more troops on the ground and would do the bulk of the dying in a new war there. That counts, too. And again, we spend money to avoid spending lives. In part it is because we have a citizen-soldiers who we value. In part it is practical because it is harder to sustain popular support for a war overseas than it is for a war on your border. If Europeans choose to spend blood rather than money, that's a European policy decision and not really a burden-sharing issue.

Plus European GDP on our side would eventually be converted to war capacity in a great power war. If America can't benefit from it, our enemies will:

Europe's statistics indicate it should be able to rival America in power. It does not. But Europe's vast potential for hard power indicates why America must fight for Europe even if Europe doesn't want to participate that much.

Do we want Europeans to spend more to have lots of nukes? The ability to fight globally? Technology that matches or exceeds ours? The ability to sustain combat? If they do that and the spending split is 50-50, should we be happy?

Be careful what you wish for:

Should Europe carry more of the defense burden to free American resources for the rest of the world? Yes. But it is complicated. …

Leading from behind sounds nice. But is it?

When we want allies who can fight without us taking the lead--wait for it--we get allies who can fight without us in the lead.

So they might fight in Vietnam. Or invade Egypt

European military capability is complicated, no?

Sure, the idea is to get Europeans to spend more to reduce our burden. Of course that’s good. But don't forget that American strength in Europe is already much smaller than Cold War levels:

During the Cold War, there were over 300,000 U.S. [Army] troops in Western Europe. That gradually shrank to about 40,000, and by 2025 there were 84,000 [total] U.S. military personnel in Europe.

Certainly, if the threat from Russia declines, our strength there would no doubt fall back toward the 40,000 level—but we’d likely keep equipment sets for them there. To withdraw significantly more than that, we'd need to dig up our war cemeteries and bring our dead soldiers home. And just as America has adjusted its strength in Europe to match the perceived threat, Europe has done that, too. But while America can send troops back home, to state the obvious, Europeans are there. When they reduce forces needed to deal with Russia, the forces are demobilized.

My question is whether the Europeans spend enough money to deal with Russia—not whether they meet an arbitrary but largely irrelevant measure of matching what America spends.

With a corollary of how well does relying on spending blood compensate for lower defense spending. Russia shows that it can work, although the war outcome is yet to be determined. And the long-term costs of such an allocation of spending blood rather than treasure is unclear, regardless of whether or not the war itself is won or lost. With collapsing birth rates, that tradeoff seems like a problem.

I'd rather keep our NATO insurance policy and lily pad for reaching the arc of crisis from western Africa to the Middle East intact at the small price we need to pay. And part of that should be the skeleton of a corps (see pp. 15-20). If just two maneuver brigades are present I'd want a bunch of brigade prepositioned unit sets just in case.

And the European are increasingly spending more for defense. With a bit more they will be able to keep Russia out of Europe with minimal help from American assets that knit together and supplement European capabilities within NATO.

NOTE: Chart via Instapundit.