Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen has urged EU countries to spend more
on defence despite the economic crisis or risk losing US solidarity.
He said "If current defence spending trends
were to continue, that would limit the practical ability of Nato's
European nations to work together with their North American allies. But
it would also risk weakening the political support for our alliance in
the United States."
He added Nato is still "the most important military power in the world."
But he warned: "The security challenges of the 21st century -
terrorism, proliferation, piracy, cyber warfare, unstable states - will
not go away as we focus on fixing our economies."
He also said "the rise of emerging powers could create a growing gap
between their capacity to act and exert influence on the international
stage and our ability to do so."
The Nato report says the US accounted for 72 percent of Nato
countries' defence spending in 2012 compared to 68 percent in 2007.
France, Germany, Italy and the UK made up the bulk of the rest, but the
French contribution fell steeply.
"This has the potential to undermine alliance solidarity and puts at
risk the ability of the European allies to act without the involvement
of the United States," the report notes.
It adds that Nato spending as a proportion of world military
expenditure fell to 60 percent in 2011 from 69 percent in 2003 and is to
hit 56 percent in 2014.
'EU like Vatican'
The angst over EU defence capabilities is not new.
Former US defence chief Robert Gates in a speech in Brussels in 2011 also voiced alarm.
"The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and
patience in the US Congress - and in the American body politic writ
large - to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that
are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the
necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own
defence," he said at the time.
Gates and Fogh Rasmussen's anxiety is not confined to Nato.
Speaking in Brussels also on Thursday on the margins of an EU foreign
ministers' meeting, Poland's Radek Sikorski said the Union needs a real
defence force of its own.
"I think the Mali crisis shows this is necessary because the next
crisis could unfold even more quickly and we need to be able to react
instantly," he told press.
"Let's recall that events in Mali unfolded very fast. The terrorists
crossed the line of contact and France reacted from one day to the next.
But we know that in the EU, as in the Vatican, the wheels of state turn
very slowly," he added.
EU arms licences
The latest EU figures
appear to show that some of the worst crisis-hit EU countries are still
ploughing money into new weapons despite Nato's concerns.
The report says that fellow EU countries in 2011 granted significant
amounts of export licences to Greece (€783mn), Portugal (€397mn) and
Spain (€1.6bn).
The numbers do not tell the whole story, however.
France, which makes up most of the Greek figure, granted licences to
negotiate future arms sales rather than export licences as such.
A large chunk of the Spanish number relates to cross-border movements
of spare parts in defence projects, such as Eurofighter or Typhoon,
managed by the European defence consortium Eads.
Most of the Portuguese figure relates to deliveries from a 2005 deal to buy armoured vehicles from Austrian firm Steyr.
Lisbon cancelled the contract last November because Steyr delivered
just 166 out of 260 units, invoking a €55 million penalty against the
supplier.
"Portugal, in the last two years, reduced its budget for the purchase
of military equipment by over 60 percent ... Also for budgetary
reasons, though not only for that, Portugal, in 2011, decided to
withdraw from several military programs, such as NH90 helicopters," its
ministry of defence told EUobserver.
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