SinoDefence Forum

Scratch

On 19th decemebr the european defence agency released a report comparing the european and US defence spending of 2005 in generall and in specific areas here.

The US spent more than twice the mony on defence as the 24 EDA members.
Though the US forces are smaller than all european combined, meaning a greater part of the budget goes into R&D and procurement.

chart of defence expenditure of the worlds countries: http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...d/spending.htm
also interesting: http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolit...e/Spending.asp

Maybe others can post defence spendings of other states/regions ...

FuManChu

The problem with Europe is that most countries spend a lot less of their GDP on defence. This has to chance if it wants to have a credible joint-defence capability.

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The_Zergling

The question is though - joint defense against what? There's no point in spending money on the military just for the sake of doing it.

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Scratch

Well regarding the proportion of GDP spent on defence, there's a lack between the ambitions and things done.
The countries want greater influence in international affairs and europe to be a formidable power. On the other hand they lack capabilites to pursue these aims. And that's not necessarily power projection, but all that C4ISR stuff and transport volume.
Plus despite all those talks of acting as a single institution, many/all countries pursue their own political interests. I think the mony already spent could do much more if it would be spent in a more efficiant way. Meaning collaborative R&D and procurement in many more cases.

FuManChu

In that case, why bother having militaries? Why have Eurofighter, Project Horizon, etc? It's obvious those countries believe they need some sort of capability. They just don't want to admit they should spend more money.

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Finn McCool

Well obviously it is necessary to have military capabilites for self defense. In previous eras that meant having enough force to protect one's homeland from invasion. Anything beyond that was really to acquire and protect more power.

Now it is necessary for most industrialized and rich countries to have the military capability to strike foreign countries and be offensive simply to have self-defense capability. This is because the world economy and human culture and society in general have become more and more interconnected. So that is why Europe needs a military.

In addition, military spending pumps life and cash into the economy and spurs technological development in peaceful areas.

However I would not say that Europe needs more defensive spending. If anything it would probably be better off with a bit less.

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IDonT

If you want to be the top dog, you have to spend the cash. Being a superpower is not cheap.

Military spending, on economic terms, does not have a very great returns. $6 billion spend on infrastructure and tax rebates can create more jobs than spending on the military. However, there is a Chinese proverb: An army is sustained for 20 years to be used in a day.

"Warfare is a great matter to a nation;it is the ground of death and of life; it is the way of survival and of destruction." - Sun Tzu

The_Zergling

I'm thinking of potential enemies or conflicts that they would actually have to use all that expensive equipment in. I would agree that the Eurofighter project was money well spent, but fact of the matter is unless the EU wants to attack the United States, they just don't need to spend insanely out of proportion amounts of cash to create a huge military.

You could argue that there are times when even relatively peaceful countries like the European ones have the obligation to intervene in say, genocide. Military technology from the 20th century is oftentimes quite adequate in the situation, and doesn't justify blowing away as much money into the military as the US does. You only have to do that when you're trying to build up an empire.

In short, unless the EU wants to invade the USA, they don't need to spend more money than they already do.

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Shingy

I personally disagree, since anything can happen and the future is unpredictable, lets say if for some reason one high tech country's relations were to sour with another nation yet the one nation had not spent anything, there might be a massive paranoia of them getting attacked or something like that, or worse an actual war, i think of it as a deterrance, plus no country would like to invade another if it was too costly, if your military is still up to date then that also decreases the chance of war.
Then again the EU could truly be united.

The_Zergling

Well there are several things worthy of notice: One is that the prominent EU nations such as the UK, France and Germany all have had declining economic growth rates as of late. It's not a wise path to invest even higher levels of the GDP into the military when they have these other problems to worry about. Secondly these countries all have technologically advanced military technology, it's not as if they've not been buying and developing new weaponary over the past 50 years, most have the F-16 and those involved in the Eurofighter project have an arguably 5th generation aircraft.

Then of course there's the fact that they're allied together economically which also influences political decisions, chances are if one was ever invaded the others would come in to support it - therefore negating the need for each country to act as if it was "1 v world".

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Scratch

Well, slowly things are moving on. In the next perhaps 5 years we're fianlly getting a new transport to replace those decades old C-160 Hercules. But still the A400M is one class under the weight capacity other militaries have. Europen countries still need to charter russian Antonovs for transport, I think a union with the ambitions of the europeans shouldn't have to rely on that.
European MALE/HALE UAV programs are still in early stages.
Furthermore I always have a look on our home defence industry on that topic. I believe a true sovereign country/union should be able to rely completely on the output of it's homegrown industry.

Scratch

I just found a (two years old) report on the defence spending of many countries. Those charts also show the defence spending as percent of the GDP. The report coveres two timeframe for comparisson '99-'00 and '03-'04 / '02
It is interesting, and somewhat sad, to note that the poorest countries contribute most of their mony to defence. DPRK lately one qurter of it. Eritrea even a little more than that some six years ago, but less now. Somewhat richer nations in the mid east like Saudi-Arabia and Quatar as well as Israel spent around 10%. None of the rich "western" nations is under the top 25 in that figure, meaning they are spending less than 5% of their GDP on defence. Also noteworthy, some countries have great differences in that meassurement in just five years.
It's a PDF file
http://www.fas.org/man/crs/RL32209.pdf

FuManChu

You have to be joking. What about the Balkans, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, etc? Even if there isn't a likely major war on the horizon, what if a conflict broke out that threatened European security? Why does everyone assume the Americans will be there on call 24/7? Perhaps the US will turn somewhat isolationist in the future - then what is Europe going to do? It couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery without American support.

All European plans concerning major future conflict seem to assume the US is going to be there to "fill in the gaps", or even do the leg-work. Christ alive, look at how lazy many of the European states are in Afghanistan, insisting their troops should do little more than drive around Kabul or the safer areas and shake hands. Do you really think with that sort of mentality Europe could go it alone? Fat chance.

European countries need to get off their backsides and start planning for a situation where everyone has to pull their weight and they only have each other to rely upon. If today you informed continental European countries of a major conflict that without serious intervention would have grave consequences in Europe, and for one reason or another no one (let's include the UK) was going to help, they'd be shitting themselves.

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The_Zergling

I'm taking this posture assuming that the EU stays intact and that member states feel that it is in their best interests to support one another should invasion ever come. They have small numbers of advanced equipment and well-equipped soldiers that can serve the purposes of their policies. Should they want to pursue the role of a world policeman as you seem to want them to do, then of course they would have to increase military spending sharply.

There is a strong difference between foreign operations and defending home soil - I believe that European operations abroad are a poor indicator of their abilities and motivation should something directly challenge their home countries, in any situation those that are fighting to defend their homelands will put up stronger resistance than ever before. Now of course if the enemy simply outclasses you by too much (Ex: Nazi Germany WWII) then there's not much you can do, but I don't see any military power that does dwarf the EU except for the United States.

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FuManChu

But it's too late to try to rearm when the threat has emerged, because it can strike at any time. This is the problem with European countries, they think they can just kick back and spend trivial amounts of GDP on defence, because everything will always be ok. So what happens when reality doesn't live up to those desires? By then it's too late to do anything.

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