Wilson Beaver
American conservatives have long called for allies to increase their defense spending. America’s allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific should expect this discussion to continue and even intensify over the coming months.
The American military is stretched thin, dealing with a wide variety of security crises and deterrence operations from Europe to the Middle East to the Pacific. Handling all these security commitments isn’t easy or cheap, and our allies need to be active, contributing security partners if it is going to work. This American-led system is good for Americans, but it’s also good for Europeans, Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Australians, and many others. Our allies also have a stake in preventing countries like China from overturning the current system, which has made all our allies and partners safer, wealthier, and freer for generations.
However, the cost needs to be shared more equitably. That means those same allies must be far more active players in international security in the future. Our European allies are more than capable of providing the bulk of conventional deterrence in Europe. Within NATO, our European allies not only have a vastly larger population than Russia, but they also constitute an economy that dwarfs that of the Russian Federation.
NATO Has a Canada Problem
France, Germany, and the United Kingdom each have economies larger than Russia’s. And they’ve used that wealth to generate substantial military forces in the not-too-distant past. During the Cold War, these countries fielded large, impressive militaries that faced down the Soviets for decades and dissuaded Moscow from launching a war of aggression against a NATO member. This is something they can do again—they only need to choose to do it.
Case in point: In 1985, European NATO member defense spending averaged 3.1 percent of GDP. This number dropped to a mere 1.43 percent by 2015 and rose only to 1.7 percent by 2022. » Read More
https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/commentary/americas-allies-need-increase-defense-spending