The future of Nato
US Vice-president Mike Pence pledged America’s “unwavering” support for Nato last weekend, but warned other Nato members that they had to make “real progress” this year on boosting defence spending. Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Pence said his countrymen could lose patience with the alliance if others failed to share the burden. Nato leaders agreed in 2014 that members needed to start spending at least 2% of GDP on defence by 2024. Only the US, Britain, Poland, Estonia and Greece currently do so. Germany spends 1.2%, France 1.8%, Italy 1.1%, and Spain 0.9%.
EU leaders rattled by Donald Trump’s rhetoric welcomed Pence’s more emollient tone – as well as his promise to hold Russia to account for its aggression in Ukraine. But the call for more defence spending met with some resistance. Germany insisted it would not accelerate its plans, but would stick to its aim of meeting the 2% target by 2024. Jean-claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, complained that the US focus on defence spending overlooked the humanitarian and aid contributions that European nations made to security.
What the editorials said
“This is not a new plea,” said The Guardian. Six years ago, Barack Obama’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, warned that Nato would collapse if other members didn’t start pulling their weight. Since then, the European states and Canada have made progress: their “defence spending has risen collectively by 3.8% above inflation in the last year”. But there’s no doubt that Europe needs to “do more, and be better coordinated, for its own defence needs within Nato”. The alliance is supposed to be a collective defence pact, not an “American policing operation”, said The Sunday Telegraph. The US spends 3.6% of its vast GDP on defence, yet several European countries spend “less on defence than the budget of the New York police department”.
The other 27 members of Nato should heed the US message, said The New York Times. But at a time when the alliance is “facing an assertive and aggressive Russia”, it’s irresponsible to hint, as Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis did last week, that the US might reduce its commitment to Nato if members don’t pay up. The US should use carrots rather than sticks, said the Boston Herald. “An offer to include members meeting their 2% goal in a future anti-missile system (perhaps sea-based) could be fruitful.”