These NATO countries are not spending their fair share on defense

[Saithan]

The leaders of the world's biggest military alliance are meeting in Warsaw this weekend. Key item on their itinerary: Money.
NATO has for years been pushing for more spending by its member states. The alliance increased overall defense spending for the first time in two decades in 2015, but most NATO countries still don't pay their recommended share.


At the start of the summit, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, "The world is a more dangerous place than just a few years ago."

Many European members -- including big economies like France and Germany -- spend less than the amount called for by NATO guidelines.

New spending data released on Monday show the U.S. shells out far more money on defense than any other nation on the planet.

According to NATO statistics, the U.S. spent an estimated $650 billion on defense last year. That's more than double the amount all the other 27 NATO countries spent between them, even though their combined GDP tops that of the U.S.

American military spending has always eclipsed other allies' budgets since the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's founding in 1949. But the gap grew much wider when the U.S. beefed up its spending after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

NATO admits it has an "over-reliance" on the U.S. for the provision of essential capabilities, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, air-to-air refueling, ballistic missile defense and airborne electronic warfare.

The U.S. also spends the highest proportion of its GDP on defense: 3.61%. The second biggest NATO spender in proportional terms is Greece, at 2.38%, according to NATO.

U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on other NATO members to spend more on defense. Donald Trump has gone even further, saying the U.S. should rethink its involvement in the military alliance because it is "obsolete" and other states don't pay a fair share.

The organization is based on the principle of collective defense: an attack against one or several of its members is considered as an attack against all. So far that has only been invoked once -- in response to the September 11 attacks.

To make the principle work, all countries are expected to chip in. NATO's official guidelines say member states should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense.

Of the 28 countries in the alliance, only five -- the U.S., Greece, Poland, Estonia and the U.K. -- meet the target.

The rest lag behind. Germany spent 1.19% of its GDP on defense last year, France forked out 1.78%.

Iceland, which doesn't have its own army, spends just 0.1% of its GDP on defense, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Five other countries spend less than 1%, according to NATO's estimates for this year: Canada, Slovenia, Belgium, Spain and Luxembourg.

All member countries that fall below the threshold committed in 2014 to gradually ramp up military spending to reach the target within the next decade.

NATO is pushing hard for the 2% guideline to be taken more seriously. "We are spending more and we are spending better, but we have a very long way to go," Stoltenberg said ahead of the summit.

CNNMoney (London) First published July 8, 2016: 12:52 PM ET

source: http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/08/news/nato-summit-spending-countries/

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I was curious as to which countries don't spend the agreed 2% of gdp and I can see that T.C. is one of them. Which made me think, did we reduce how much we spend on TSK, or is it because our nation has experienced an economic growth that diminished our expenditure on Defense ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_states_of_NATO#Military_personnel

Turkey has the second largest active army in NATO. but that is including conscripts if I recall correctly.

 

[T-123456]

For the size of our Armed Forces,even 2,5% of GDP is not enough.
Our equipment is mostly obsolete,we need to do more then other countries to make sure that everything is up to date.
Long road ahead.

 

[BARS]

US is filhty rich, it is okay for them to have billions of dollars get spended on defence. Greece having economic hard times, most optimistic predictions says full recovery at 2060s, Greece should lower defence expenditure, but we all know Greece loves having pissing contest with Turkey. Turkey is having economic hard times too, but in our case having a strong army means having instability, we should at least keep the defence spending at where it is right know. The country that complains most about defence expenditure is US. If they really want us too independent of US funds or equipment they should give us the Technology.

 

[Hamza913]

Simple solution really. Just don't help those who won't reach the target. I'm pretty sure that will fix the problem.

 

[mike2000 is back]

Old issue , many western European countries don't really have any major threat since the Soviet union collapsed. Russia is not that strong anymore to poses major threat unlike before, reason only eastern European/Baltic states and Scandinavian countries to a lesser extent still consider Russia as a major threat, hence their high defence spending compared to western Europe.
So it's difficult to justify such high amounts of spending to our public who would rather we spent it on social programs/healthcare etc which is what western European countries have been prioritising anyway . So the situation will remain the same for a while until these nations face a big enough threat to justify such spending.

 

[what]

Old issue , many western European countries don't really have any major threat since the Soviet union collapsed. Russia is not that strong anymore to poses major threat unlike before, reason only eastern European/Baltic states and Scandinavian countries to a lesser extent still consider Russia as a major threat, hence their high defence spending compared to western Europe.
So it's difficult to justify such high amounts of spending to our public who would rather we spent it on social programs/healthcare etc which is what western European countries have been prioritising anyway . So the situation will remain the same for a while until these nations face a big enough threat to justify such spending.

Same can be said about Turkey, with no real Army as a threat or any major conflict really endangering the country.
But still if you're a member you should do as agred up on.

 

[mike2000 is back]

Same can be said about Turkey, with no real Army as a threat or any major conflict really endangering the country.
But still if you're a member you should do as agred up on.

Turkey does have threats in its region from instability/bloody conflicts and geo political civil wars in Syria and Iraq which has already drawn in Turkish troops in these countries also leading to conflict pouring into Turkey (terror attacks etc) at its doorsteps to insurgents/armed separatists Rebel groups like PKK to an unresolved territorial disputes wot Greece and the Cyprus issue which can still one day flare up. Etc. If any western European power was facing such a situation they will have a quite high defence spending and a total revamp of their military/defence forces.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

US is filhty rich, it is okay for them to have billions of dollars get spended on defence. Greece having economic hard times, most optimistic predictions says full recovery at 2060s, Greece should lower defence expenditure, but we all know Greece loves having pissing contest with Turkey. Turkey is having economic hard times too, but in our case having a strong army means having instability, we should at least keep the defence spending at where it is right know. The country that complains most about defence expenditure is US. If they really want us too independent of US funds or equipment they should give us the Technology.

The requirement is a percentage of GDP.
A poor country has to spend a lot less per capita.

Old issue , many western European countries don't really have any major threat since the Soviet union collapsed. Russia is not that strong anymore to poses major threat unlike before, reason only eastern European/Baltic states and Scandinavian countries to a lesser extent still consider Russia as a major threat, hence their high defence spending compared to western Europe.
So it's difficult to justify such high amounts of spending to our public who would rather we spent it on social programs/healthcare etc which is what western European countries have been prioritising anyway . So the situation will remain the same for a while until these nations face a big enough threat to justify such spending.

We used to spend 3% of GDP, but now it is more like 1% I think.
There is currently a debate on increasing the budget, but even the biggest proposed increase
will leave us far below 2%.

 

[Neptune]

There's a long term plan to increase it to 2.0% of the GDP step by step each year. But given current circumstances such as the current government that does not want to provide a wide open fund to military and the economic state we are in. They definitely won't meet that criteria in their planned timeline, thats for sure.

 

[KediKesenFare3]

Like I said many times before, unfortunately we are spending gigantic amounts of money for our defence/military but we're simply hiding the true figures.

There is actually not one single foreign scientific source that classifies the official Turkish numbers as reliable. You can find estimations which are more than three times higher than the official figures.

There is no doubt. We are spending much more money. This is obvious. How else can you have the second largest military forces in the Nato with several operations ongoing at the same time in totally different regions?

I would guess we're spending round about 30 billion USD every year (including spending for R&D).

 

[Kebapçı Erhan]

Spending will increase when more projects are completed, right now they don't want to spend on A when B is not right. All of the new Turkish systems will integrate together, so I predict we will spend more in a few years as ship and radar programs complete. Also some missile programs.

 

[Neptune]

Like I said many times before, unfortunately we are spending gigantic amounts of money for our defence/military but we're simply hiding the true figures.

That my friend, is as much as a hoax as the story of one maroon beret being able to take out 2000 American troops.

I would guess we're spending round about 30 billion USD every year (including spending for R&D).

And that's another one, no offense. I can agree that there had been some times that our defense spending was higher than the recorded data, but that was also nothing drastical.

 

[Saithan]

I have always believed that TSK tried to spend the money wisely, like everything we buy should not have one purpose but more like a multirole. Every since we started R&D on indigenous products we've only invested in the least possible/necessary. This is from the onset that we'll have a product that satisfies the need of TSK, and we won't have to buy "off the shell" products.

Could this be one of the reasons why our expenses are below the 2% gdp.

Scandinavian countries are aware that they've downgraded investment into military, and Everytime Russia tests the "awareness" and "responsiveness" of the scandinavian countries I get the feeling they're laughing at them.

Sweden had at one time a "russian submarine" news circling in the media, but I don't think they ever found out about anything.

Denmarks Bornholm island registers several russian tresspassing, but can't really do anything about it. So I think Russia is testing the limits, but the responsiveness of scandinavian countries are low. DK needs to upgrade thei AF and they've picked the F35 as far as I know. i don't know if Sweden will go with Gripen.

 

[BARS]

The requirement is a percentage of GDP.
A poor country has to spend a lot less per capita.

Priorities can be change. To a certain limit military spending is more important then feeding your children, but after that treshold you have to cut down defence spending and feed your children. Dont assume anyone in this forum dont know what is percentage of a GDP is!

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

I have always believed that TSK tried to spend the money wisely, like everything we buy should not have one purpose but more like a multirole. Every since we started R&D on indigenous products we've only invested in the least possible/necessary. This is from the onset that we'll have a product that satisfies the need of TSK, and we won't have to buy "off the shell" products.

Could this be one of the reasons why our expenses are below the 2% gdp.

Scandinavian countries are aware that they've downgraded investment into military, and Everytime Russia tests the "awareness" and "responsiveness" of the scandinavian countries I get the feeling they're laughing at them.

Sweden had at one time a "russian submarine" news circling in the media, but I don't think they ever found out about anything.

Denmarks Bornholm island registers several russian tresspassing, but can't really do anything about it. So I think Russia is testing the limits, but the responsiveness of scandinavian countries are low. DK needs to upgrade thei AF and they've picked the F35 as far as I know. i don't know if Sweden will go with Gripen.

U-137 was certainly from the Soviet Union, and it was undeniable inside Swedish waters,
beeing ran aground on a cliff for weeks.
There was one type of strange sound, believed to come from a midget submarine,
which turned out to come from a small animal.
One search is suspected to have found a West German submarine.
The Navy was ordered not to blow the mines as it passed by.

Searching for submarines is difficult, in the latest search, the Swedish Navy had several indications
on such presence, but they did not name any country responsible (the press did).
Indications included things found when surveilling the sea floor.
When the search began, a suspected Russian submarine mother vessel changed its course,
and steamed towards the search area, which raised a few eye brows.