March 11, 2024 | The Wall Street Journal
The Dangers of a Rearmed Europe
NATO kept its promise to keep ‘the Germans down.’ The U.S. shouldn’t assume that success is permanent.
March 11, 2024 | The Wall Street Journal
The Dangers of a Rearmed Europe
NATO kept its promise to keep ‘the Germans down.’ The U.S. shouldn’t assume that success is permanent.
Excerpt
Since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s inception in 1949, American leaders have complained that the alliance doesn’t spend enough on defense. John F. Kennedy in 1963 told his National Security Council that “we cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying their fair share.” Deputy Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci told the 1981 Munich Security Conference that “the United States cannot be expected to improve and strengthen U.S. forces in Europe, unless other allies increase their own contribution to the combined defense effort.”
The end of the Cold War didn’t help. NATO asserts that almost half its members won’t spend 2% of their gross domestic product on defense this year, a decade after the alliance affirmed that baseline expectation. The war in Ukraine has spurred necessary but insufficient growth in those commitments.
Mr. MacLean is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and host of the “School of War” podcast.