What War Nations of NATO's Eastern Flank Are Preparing For?

 

"Nations of NATO's eastern flank are rearming and preparing for war. But Germany and most of NATO's other biggest members aren't.

Events in Ukraine last year drew promises from across the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to boost military budgets. Members have pledged to place multibillion-dollar weapons orders and put arms industries on a war footing.

But, more than a year later, countries are moving at sharply different speeds.

That divide is greatest between neighbors Germany and Poland. Berlin this year will fall $18.5 billion short of a pivotal NATO benchmark, while Poland will spend almost exactly the same amount above that threshold, according to a new analysis by Germany's IFO Institute, an economic think tank. The gap is particularly stark because Germany's economy is about six times the size of Poland's.

The widening gulf in defense priorities between two of Europe's largest countries puts in sharp relief the broader tension among Western allies over their willingness to commit to the rearming. With the conflict entering a crucial phase before an expected Ukrainian offensive and the prospect of a protracted conflict of attrition increasing, Kyiv's staunchest supporters said Europe must follow the U.S. lead and prepare for an extended confrontation.

While no NATO members openly oppose that position, many are lifting budgets only haltingly and a few, including Canada, Spain and Italy, are even spending less relative to GDP. Spending levels promise to be a hotly contested issue when NATO leaders meet for their annual summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July.

NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend at least 2% of gross domestic product on defense by next year. Last year, only seven of 30 NATO members achieved 2%, including Poland, according to the alliance.

Following events in Ukraine in February 2022, many members committed to increase spending. Countries closest to Russia have increased outlays most aggressively, while members farther west have moved more slowly.

Defense spending in Germany, Europe's largest economy, stood at 1.5% of GDP last year, according to NATO, but days after the conflict started, Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged to surpass the 2% target every year and announced the creation of an off-budget defense fund of 100 billion euros, or about $108 billion, to accelerate rearmament.

Since then, German military spending has barely budged and the fund remains almost untouched. Economists said that at this pace, Germany might not reach the 2% target and could even fall further behind.

The German Finance Ministry declined to comment on whether Germany would hit the NATO target. A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said Germany's defense spending would keep rising and reach 2% of GDP over five years on average.

IFO calculated that 2% of German GDP this year would be 81.1 billion euros, and military spending will miss that by 17.1 billion euros. That is NATO's largest shortfall in money value, although 14 other members with smaller economies have greater shortfalls in relation to GDP, IFO said.

Poland, in contrast, will lead NATO in military spending as a percentage of GDP this year, at 4.3%, according to the IFO analysis. Warsaw, an outspoken advocate for Ukraine and opponent of Russia, has more than doubled that proportion since 2021, IFO said. 

It has placed large weaponry orders from the U.S. and South Korea, including for aircraft and tanks.

In Poland, 2% of GDP this year would be about 14.8 billion euros, and spending will top that by 16.9 billion euros, according to IFO. That would be almost exactly the same monetary value as Germany's shortfall.

Poland has urged its larger allies, including Germany and France, to spend more on defense. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a recent interview praised Scholz's commitment last year as "quite brave," but lamented that the pace of action "is not meeting targets."

One reason for Germany's apparent backsliding is inflation, which boosts Germany's nominal GDP, making it ever harder to reach the target. Even in official NATO calculations using constant 2015 dollars, Germany tends to lag behind allies. Inflation, and rising financing costs, also affect how money is spent, for example by raising running costs and wages while making military gear less affordable.

Political calculations also affect spending. While Finance Minister Christian Lindner is sympathetic to higher military spending, he has ruled out raising taxes or increasing the budget deficit to fund it, at least without equivalent spending cuts elsewhere.

Poland's Morawiecki said that while he believes a growing proportion of leading figures in Germany support Scholz's shift on military spending, he also sees that "some part of their political elite and business elite would want to go back to business as usual, and this worries me."

Germany has significantly increased its support for Ukraine, but not all of that counts as military spending. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said in Berlin recently that Germany had become his country's second-largest weapons supplier after the U.S., including a recently announced package valued at 2.7 billion euros." [1]

 What war nations of NATO's eastern flank are preparing for? If this war is nuclear, no preparation is needed. They will sing with angels pretty soon without expensive preparations anyway. So, nations of NATO's eastern flank don't understand what world they are living in. Nations of NATO's eastern flank are wasting humanity's resources. Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki is again in favor of the introduction of the death penalty, it seems that the angels will not be happy about that either, seeing Morawiecki.

 

1. Defense Spending Divides NATO. Michaels, Daniel. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 24 May 2023: A.1.