In February, I published a piece entitled “Europe Retreats” arguing that, as the financial crisis bites, European countries will cut back on military operations and budgets – just as rising powers like China and India are extending their reach. Today, SIPRI published its Yearbook, which tracks such things – the data makes Europe look pretty tough:
Top 10 Military Spenders, 2008
USA $607bn
China $84.9bn
France $65.74bn
UK $65.35bn
Russia $58.6bn
Germany $46.87bn
Japan $46.38bn
Italy $40.69bn
Saudi Arabia $38.2bn
India $30.0bn
But before we all boast about Europe’s mighty armies, it’s worth checking out a first-class analysis from Tomas Valasek of the Center on European Reform, which explains why European defense spending is about to drop:
Most European governments will have to increase taxes and cut spending in order to rebalance the books. Those cuts will hit defence harder than other parts of the budget. This is because many forms of government spending – like the cost of paying interest on public debt – cannot be reduced by decree. Some non-mandatory expenditures like healthcare tend to be politically explosive: no government wants to be seen to be taking risks with people’s health. So defence budgets are an obvious target for ax-wielding finance ministers. George Osborne, the UK shadow chancellor of the exchequer, warned recently that he would cut defence spending if the Conservatives won the election (which they are widely expected to do this year or next).
The looming military budget cuts will have many salutary effects. Defence establishments, with their resistance to civilian oversight and emphasis on continuity, tend to get bloated in times of relative plenty. It often takes a crisis to force meaningful reforms. France – which suffered a defence budget meltdown in 2007, even before the economic crisis unfolded in full – at last shut many of its African bases, a legacy of its colonial years. Slovakia recently cut the number of military commands from eight to three – a long overdue step that will reduce unnecessary overheads. Other European militaries, too, will come out of the crisis with more sensible structures and budgets.
But the economic crisis presents several serious risks to European defences. The easiest portion of the defence budget to cut is the part that pays for operations. Withdrawing soldiers from faraway places plays well at home (it removes young men and women from harm’s way) and is politically easier than restructuring the militaries (no one is laid off). But European governments should resist the urge to pull back their soldiers indiscriminately; this could cause conflicts to re-flare and leave vulnerable people at risk. Instead, they should stop sending overlapping missions to the same trouble spots. Because international institutions compete to fly their flag in missions abroad, it is not unusual for western governments to have multiple operations in the same place. For example, three different forces are currently fighting piracy off the coast of Somalia. That is a wasteful use of taxpayer money. The EU, NATO, and the US should roll their Somalia operations into one or two.
Tomas goes on to point out that the downturn will also cause governments to cut back on big weapons programs, and that their decisions on what to save and what to cut will probably be driven by domestic concerns rather than security calculations. I recommend you read the whole thing closely. I’d like to stay with operations briefly, though. It’s true that “international institutions compete to fly their flag in missions abroad”. But this is also a particularly European problem, with the EU and NATO jostling for attention. As I argue in another recent piece for the CER, economic and political factors require Europeans to stop being picky and work through other mechanisms like the UN. As the downturn bites, we have to be more pragmatic about crisis management.
