Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The U.S. Keeps Enabling European Free-Riding on Ukraine & Defense Generally

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Ukraine, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, free-riding, NATO, burden sharing, defense spending, allies, Biden, European Union, Europe, North Atlantic treaty Organization, EU, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Ukraine War

Twenty-three years ago, I published an article (which you can download here) on defense burden-sharing in the America’s premier national security alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), titled “Promises, Promises.” I borrowed the title from a 1968 Broadway musical that was ultimately about cynically made pledges because I thought it was perfect for a study that documented how NATO’s European members kept welshing on their vows to raise their defense spending to serious levels – and how the real blame ultimately rested with an overly indulgent United States.

Twenty-three years later, the first major war in Europe since 1945 keeps dragging on, and fresh evidence makes clear (a) that the Europeans (both inside and outside NATO) remain defense deadbeats; and (b) that a prime reason remains their so-far-well-founded confidence that they can rely on the United States to pick up any slack.

Not that no burden-sharing progress has been made at all. As NATO itself just reported, seven members (including the United States) have now met the guideline of spending at least two percent of their national economic output on the military. That’s up from three in 2014.

Just three problems here. First, NATO has thirty members, meaning that the vast majority are still skimping on defense. Second, the two percent guideline was agreed to in 2014. Even had no Ukraine War broken out, that would be a pretty modest move in nine years. With a conflict raging in Europe itself, it’s minimal at best. And in fact, only one NATO country crossed that two percent threshhold since the Russian invasion – Lithuania, which is located awfully close to the war zone.

Third, the NATO guideline is just that – an aspiration, not a hard-and-fast promise, let alone something contained in a legally binding treaty. And reportedly, there’s scant enthusiasm among alliance members for raising it.

Of course, in this Ukraine War era, defense spending isn’t the only contribution that can be made to Europe’s security, and NATO isn’t the only grouping capable of helping out. But the widely followed “Ukraine Support Tracker” compiled by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy shows that after some brief, belated signs that countries in the European Union (EU – whose members contain both most NATO countries and others on the continent) were collectively stepping up with both military and mainly economic aid for Ukraine, these countries have begun slacking off again in relative terms.

As the Kiel analysts put in their February 21 update:

“Over 2022, the US led the way with major support decisions for Ukraine, with EU countries following with some delay and overtaking the US in the meantime with their total commitments. With additional data now collected (November 21 to January 15), the US again takes the lead.”

The specific numbers? “With additional pledges of nearly 37 billion euros in December, the Americans have earmarked a total of just over 73.1 billion euros for Ukraine support. For the EU, the comparable figure is 54.9 billion euros.”

My “Promises, Promises” article documented in detail that the European NATO members kept free-riding on the United States because Washington repeatedly all but told them that America’s commitment to Europe’s defense would remain unchanged whatever the allies did spending-wise.   

These days, President Biden has also essentially invited the Europeans to free ride by repeatedly declaring that the United States would stand with Ukraine against Russia’s aggression – as he expressed it most recently last month in Poland – “no matter what.”  

Foreign policy realists (a group that should include you as well as me) aren’t mainly bothered by the flagrant unfairness of this situation. As long as it’s tolerated by the United States, free-riding is arguably in the interests of the NATO allies – and ultimately that’s what realists believe foreign policymaking should be all about (though allied leaders might usefully ponder the possible limits of even American patience).     

Instead, the main concern is pragmatic. In the end, allies are worth having only if they can be counted on to join a fight if one breaks out. At the very least, how can any military engage in any useful planning without knowing what forces will be available? Allies like the NATO free-riders, which plainly aren’t ready to make significant sacrifices on behalf of common security during peacetime, seem anything but dependable in the event of hostilities. That’s something Mr. Biden urgently needs to think through before his Ukraine policy creates the acid test.        

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Allies are Standing (A Tiny Bit) with Ukraine

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alliances, allies, burden sharing, EU, Europe, European Union, free-riding, Kiel Institute for the World Economy, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine-Russia war

Even a long-standing critic like me of the record of U.S. allies in Europe in sharing the burden of their own defense found the graphic below to be quite the stunner. It makes clear that, so far, countries that for decades have been deadbeats and free-riders when it comes to fielding armed forces capable of defeating first Soviet and then post-Soviet Russian aggression, are behaving just as selfishly and miserly in supporting Ukraine’s resistance to the Kremlin’s invasion – and presumably keeping themselves safe from attack or bullying by Moscow.

The graphic comes from a leading German think tank – the Kiel Institute for the World Economy – and it shows that between the February 24 start of the invasion of Ukaine through March 27, the United States, in the words of the Institute’s research director, “is giving significantly more than the entire [European Union], in whose immediate neighborhood the war is raging.”

The specific amounts of combined financial, humanitarian, and military assistance (in euros) , according to Kiel: the United States, 7.6 billion; all European Union countries combined, 2.9 billion; EU institutions (like the European Investment Bank, 3.4 billion. Adding the United Kingdom (not an EU member) increases the European total by $712 million euros – and would still leave this figure below that of U.S. aid in all forms.

True to RealityChek‘s long-time insistence that data be presented in context, the Europeans come off somewhat better when these aid figures are presented as percentages of total economic output. After all, it’s completely unrealistic to expect even the most vigilant very small economy to donate as much in absolute terms as a much larger economy, all else equal.

But as the Kiel graph beow shows, most of the Europeans don’t come off that much better.

In fact, except for Estonia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Sweden, the United States holds the lead according to this measure, too. And remember: Poland and Slovakia are right next door to Ukraine, Estonia and Lithuania border Russia, and Sweden is located just across the Baltic Sea to them. As for the rest of Europe, I’ll just circle back to the point made by the Kiel Institute research director: It’s their “immediate neighborhood”! So their relative efforts should be exponentially greater than America’s, as should those of the countries even closer to the fighting.

Moreover, it’s easy to understand why European military aid has been so modest. These countries have been skimping on their militaries for decades. But as a result, they should be compensating by providing much greater amounts of economic and humanitarian assistance.

These figures are damning enough as examples of continued European fecklessness. But they’re even more important because the continent’s free-riding means that for the foreseeable future, American military forces will keep playing a predominant role in any response to the Ukraine invasion. And even if President Biden sticks with his pledge to keep U.S. troops out of the fighting in Ukraine, their very presence in the vicinity of a conflict could expose the U.S. homeland literally to mortal danger. 

For as I’ve noted, if the war spills over borders into the countries where the American units are based, and that enjoy a legally ironclad promise of protection by the United States and the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), U.S. and Russian forces will almost surely wind up shooting at each other, and the prospect of escalation to the all-out nuclear war level becomes terrifyingly real. 

A Europe willing and therefore at some point able to defend itself would reduce this danger to acceptable levels. But as the Kiel data show, because the Europeans remain protectorates much more than genuine allies, this point looks as far off in the future as ever.