Article 5’s commitment to common defense means nothing if other NATO members aren’t making, or actively trying to make, their contributions to the club.
Most people know about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO’s) Article 5 pledge of collective defense: An attack on a NATO member is considered an attack on all members. Undergirding Article 5 is the promise all NATO members made to maintain defense spending at 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
The idea behind the 2 percent rule is simple: No NATO member can come anywhere near America’s $700 billion Pentagon budget, but America has a much larger economy than the other NATO members do. By requiring each NATO member to contribute according to the size of their respective economies, the alliance ensures every country contributes its “fair share.”
This rule attempts to cut down on free riders. Germany, for example, might think that given America’s commitment to defend them—and a never-higher American defense budget, surpassing U.S. defense spending even at the height of the Cold War in real (inflation-adjusted) terms—allows Germany’s politicians to sit back and let America do all the work.
But the rule is being ignored. Right now, countries in the NATO alliance are largely not meeting their obligations—and there’s no indication they plan to do so.Read the rest from Willis L. Krumholz HERE and follow link below to a related story:
Germany’s military is dysfunctional and they have no plans to fix it
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