The failure of Germany to pay for an adequate military is a problem for NATO collective defense given that Germany has the continent's largest economy. But even the best-case country of Britain is faltering:
The budget set by Britain's defense ministry to support new equipment needed in the next decade could fall short by 20.8 billion pounds ($29.5 billion), Britain's independent government spending watchdog has said.
And this is a shortfall in what Britain has planned to have--which seemed inadequate.
Given that Russia remains a weak--if aggressive--country on NATO's eastern flank, European states don't need a crash defense program to cope with threats from Russia.
But the long holiday from adequate defense spending does need to be reversed if NATO doesn't want to live with the notion that a weaker Russia will have incentive to strike first at NATO's vulnerable members in the east with little worry that NATO could stop them or even react and counter-attack with less than a crash defense program and mobilization.
And please don't think that a parallel European Union defense organization--which is all about wrecking NATO which includes America in order to strengthen the EU imperial project--will do anything but weaken European defenses.
