Why NATO Should Pivot Toward Economic Security

Excerpt

The battlefield is shifting—from troops and trenches to critical minerals, maritime insurance, and export controls. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are all increasingly engaging in economic combat—so is the United States. For NATO to remain relevant, leaders need to use the upcoming Ankara, Turkey summit on July 7-8 to begin reinventing NATO with economic security as its core.

At last year’s summit, military spending was at the top of the agenda, with every member except Spain committing to spend 5 percent of national income on defense. But only 3.5 percent is slated to go to traditional defense; the remaining 1.5 percent of GDP is for resilience efforts —that is where economic security should come in.

In June, the Trump administration pressed NATO allies to remove telecom equipment from China’s Huawei over cyber and espionage risks. That vulnerability, however, is only one of many.

Over the past year, China has restricted and even denied exports of rare earths, critical minerals, magnets, and battery technology—all vital for the Western defense industrial base. Europe’s aerospace and defense industry warned production could stall as orders surged. NATO has named 12 defense-critical raw materials, from gallium to titanium, without which modern munitions, radars, and aircraft cannot be built. China dominates the supply of most of them.

Josh Birenbaum is the deputy director of the Center on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on economic statecraft, illicit finance, global corruption, and the weaponization of radical transparency. Antonia-Laura Pup is a Fulbright scholar, CEFP intern, and teaching assistant at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.