Smart Defence? Not in Greece (or the United States)

This comment first appeared as an editorial in NATO Watch Observatory No.31, April 2012

According to recently-released European Council data on arms licences granted by member states, EU countries sold Greece over €1 billion of arms at the same time as negotiating its first bail-out back in 2010. While France was by far the biggest seller, with €871 million of aircraft, missiles and defence electronics, pro-austerity advocates the Netherlands and Germany together sold almost €90 million of mostly electronics and ground vehicles. An anonymous aide to the then Greek leader, George Papandreou, said, "No one is saying 'Buy our warships or we won't bail you out.' But the clear implication is that they will be more supportive if we do".

Greece remains one of the biggest defence spenders in NATO - over the past 10 years its military budget has stood at an average of 4% of GDP, more than £900 per person. This is largely due to perceived threats from NATO ally Turkey and from illegal immigration. Paul Hayden commenting in The Guardian said, “One cannot help but speculate that if Greece’s military spending had been reined in sooner, it would not be experiencing the dramatic crisis it is going through now”. 
 
In a previous editorial we warned about the small print in NATO’s Smart Defence initiative: an attempt to buck the trend in European defence cuts by achieving ‘more with less’ through prioritization, specialization and cooperation. Restructuring Greece’s oversized military would seem the most logical and smartest place to make such a start. In fact, as Paul Hayden points out, “if it had only spent the EU average of 1.7% over the last 20 years, it would have saved a total of 52% of its GDP – meaning instead of being completely bankrupt it would be among the more typical countries struggling with the recession”. 
 
A similar story, but on a much grander scale also applies to the United States, where austerity liberalism and anti-government conservatism, have so far failed to dent a bloated Pentagon budget. According to Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defence in the Reagan administration and now one of the foremost proponents of deeper cuts in the US military, the 2012 defence budget is slated to shrink by “not one penny”. And he rightly concludes, “It is time for DOD, the administration and Congress to stop playing games and begin to bring defence spending under control as part of our overall plan to cut the burgeoning deficit. Our security depends on it”.