Thank you very much for writing and posting this article, Lesia.
I have been trying to raise awareness about this for quite some time now because our country of Slovenia has been for a long time nothing but a sorry liability, rather than an asset for the entire NATO military alliance.
Not only that we are light years away from the bare minimum of two percent of national GDP being spent for defense and military but we are also, according to the most recent results of NATO-wide opinion polls, the country that has the least favorable view towards NATO.
What is more, according to the last year's information about international economy, we have been also one out of only two EU member states (the other one was Croatia) that has increased its bilateral trade with russia on a yearly basis. And while Croatia's bilateral trade with russia has increased by "only" 3%, Slovenia's bilateral trade with russia has increased by a staggering 22%!!!
Seeing what's happening across Europe at the ballot box, witness Romania last Sunday, the USA & many other democracies, spending on cybersecurity should take priority over hardware and even any other sector, be that education or energy or whatever.
Bad actors the world over have now learned to game the system over social media, and Meta, TikTok & Twitter/X seem only too happy to facilitate them. The rot started with Zuckerberg, others learned, and Musk took over Twitter. Meanwhile the tabloid press and local newspapers have been bought up and controlled by media magnates who have more power & influence than is good for for all of us. These too have largely been weaponised against democracy.
Until and unless governments are able to effectively counteract outside interference & influence of the electorate, democracy itself is going down the pan, and faster than you could imagine.
I'm hesitant to suggest it, but the urgency is such that I think governments should seriously consider shutting down the social media sites in the weeks running up to all further elections until we've worked out how to counteract the bad actors, the traitors on the inside and the aggressor autocratic states on the outside.
This is an interesting subject and one which need to be discussed more. In fact we need to be having a conversation in each of our nations about what the military is for, why spending on defence has fallen too far and why there needs to be a correction.
Your chart shows a very interesting trend that basically the closer the country is to Russia the higher the percentage of GDP their defence spending represents. There are only a few exceptions to this “rule”
More fundamentally as modern western liberal democracies we all need to have a national conversation about what our national defence structure needs to look like.
For example in the recent UK General Election Defence did not really figure in the campaigning most likely because both main parties did not really believe it was an issue that would move the dial politically.
Only the Conservative Party made an effort to at least try, with the commitment to move the UK defence spending to a level equivalent to 2.5 percent of GDP, whereas Labour has said they want to do this when the country can afford it - in reality we cannot afford not to spend a lot more than 2.5 percent but there just isn’t enough being said about it.
One of our top Generals mentioned conscription earlier this year and the chattering classes nearly had a fit.
Meanwhile in Sweden they are having a national conversation about both reintroducing conscription and building new bomb shelters.
I can’t imagine any of the British politicians calling for a building programme of bomb shelters.
As to why Spain and Belgium doesn’t want Ukraine in… I think they can be brought along. I see some reasons, not sound ones, but probable ones. The countries doesn’t want to be involved in a war. That is naive of course given what is happening in Ukraine, but they hope that the situation can be solved without Ukraine entering NATO. Because then we would soon be in an article 5 scenario. This is basically by your analysis.
But regarding the 2 percent goal and not meeting it… I don’t know exactly how you measure defense spending. Let’s look at the US, defense spender per extraordinar. Us armed forces have health care don’t they? I assume that goes on the military budget? And veteran support? Same I assume? And all the spending on things not NATO counts? How would the US end up as a Nato country if you adjusted for this? But the easy way would be to calculate the health expenditure for the other countries. Then I guess several more countries would do much better. Without changing anything but their accounting practices.
So, I am not really sure if that 2 percent of GDP is a good measurement of defense spending. You should at least know the accounting practices and what constitutes military spending in each country,
Having said all that, Spain and Belgium (and other countries) resisting Ukraine membership in NATO should be ashamed of that. I just don’t think spending on military I. Percent of GDP adds to anything.
Thank you very much for writing and posting this article, Lesia.
I have been trying to raise awareness about this for quite some time now because our country of Slovenia has been for a long time nothing but a sorry liability, rather than an asset for the entire NATO military alliance.
Not only that we are light years away from the bare minimum of two percent of national GDP being spent for defense and military but we are also, according to the most recent results of NATO-wide opinion polls, the country that has the least favorable view towards NATO.
What is more, according to the last year's information about international economy, we have been also one out of only two EU member states (the other one was Croatia) that has increased its bilateral trade with russia on a yearly basis. And while Croatia's bilateral trade with russia has increased by "only" 3%, Slovenia's bilateral trade with russia has increased by a staggering 22%!!!
Seeing what's happening across Europe at the ballot box, witness Romania last Sunday, the USA & many other democracies, spending on cybersecurity should take priority over hardware and even any other sector, be that education or energy or whatever.
Bad actors the world over have now learned to game the system over social media, and Meta, TikTok & Twitter/X seem only too happy to facilitate them. The rot started with Zuckerberg, others learned, and Musk took over Twitter. Meanwhile the tabloid press and local newspapers have been bought up and controlled by media magnates who have more power & influence than is good for for all of us. These too have largely been weaponised against democracy.
Until and unless governments are able to effectively counteract outside interference & influence of the electorate, democracy itself is going down the pan, and faster than you could imagine.
I'm hesitant to suggest it, but the urgency is such that I think governments should seriously consider shutting down the social media sites in the weeks running up to all further elections until we've worked out how to counteract the bad actors, the traitors on the inside and the aggressor autocratic states on the outside.
This is an interesting subject and one which need to be discussed more. In fact we need to be having a conversation in each of our nations about what the military is for, why spending on defence has fallen too far and why there needs to be a correction.
Your chart shows a very interesting trend that basically the closer the country is to Russia the higher the percentage of GDP their defence spending represents. There are only a few exceptions to this “rule”
More fundamentally as modern western liberal democracies we all need to have a national conversation about what our national defence structure needs to look like.
For example in the recent UK General Election Defence did not really figure in the campaigning most likely because both main parties did not really believe it was an issue that would move the dial politically.
Only the Conservative Party made an effort to at least try, with the commitment to move the UK defence spending to a level equivalent to 2.5 percent of GDP, whereas Labour has said they want to do this when the country can afford it - in reality we cannot afford not to spend a lot more than 2.5 percent but there just isn’t enough being said about it.
One of our top Generals mentioned conscription earlier this year and the chattering classes nearly had a fit.
Meanwhile in Sweden they are having a national conversation about both reintroducing conscription and building new bomb shelters.
I can’t imagine any of the British politicians calling for a building programme of bomb shelters.
Maybe we need to though.
Canada appears to be committed to increased spending. We will see.
As to why Spain and Belgium doesn’t want Ukraine in… I think they can be brought along. I see some reasons, not sound ones, but probable ones. The countries doesn’t want to be involved in a war. That is naive of course given what is happening in Ukraine, but they hope that the situation can be solved without Ukraine entering NATO. Because then we would soon be in an article 5 scenario. This is basically by your analysis.
But regarding the 2 percent goal and not meeting it… I don’t know exactly how you measure defense spending. Let’s look at the US, defense spender per extraordinar. Us armed forces have health care don’t they? I assume that goes on the military budget? And veteran support? Same I assume? And all the spending on things not NATO counts? How would the US end up as a Nato country if you adjusted for this? But the easy way would be to calculate the health expenditure for the other countries. Then I guess several more countries would do much better. Without changing anything but their accounting practices.
So, I am not really sure if that 2 percent of GDP is a good measurement of defense spending. You should at least know the accounting practices and what constitutes military spending in each country,
Having said all that, Spain and Belgium (and other countries) resisting Ukraine membership in NATO should be ashamed of that. I just don’t think spending on military I. Percent of GDP adds to anything.