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Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at Coastal Carolina University before the South Carolina Republican primary in Conway, South Carolina, on Feb. 10, 2024.
Trump's censure of defense spending “delinquents” triggers public backlash
Donald Trump can make his own claims to transforming the world beyond America’s borders – though whether it is by design, only he knows.
The frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination made news last month when he said he would not necessarily protect NATO countries that did not hit spending targets.
He said he was asked by the leader of a “delinquent” nation whether he would protect them from Russian invasion, even if they did not meet NATO’s spending target of 2% of GDP. He said he replied: “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them (the Russians) to do whatever the hell they want.”
The comments sent a chill through “delinquent” nations like Canada, which spends just 1.3% of GDP on defense and which, while it has said it aims to reach the 2% target someday, has taken no concrete steps to do so.
Now, the public is taking note. A new poll by the Angus Reid Institute found that slightly more than half of Canadians believe Canada should increase defense spending to 2% of GDP or more – a number that has remained constant since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
However, a follow-up question mentioned Trump’s comments and asked again if spending should reach 2%. In that instance, support rose to 65% from 53%. There was a two-fold increase among younger women, who tend to recoil from all things Trump in most Canadian polls.
The survey said more than half of Canadians think Canada is falling behind with respect to its military power and diplomatic influence.
Increased pressure for more defense spending will put the Trudeau Liberal government on the horns of a dilemma. It has increased spending since coming to power in 2015 to fund new F35 fighter jets and 15 new frigates. But enthusiasm for the military has been lukewarm and in a recent “refocusing” of government spending, it announced it would cut expenditure on defense by more than $2 billion over the next three years. Hitting the 2% target could cost an extra $13 billion - money the Liberals do not have to spare.
Ian Bremmer, founder and president of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, told Canada’s National Post earlier this month that the lack of concern about defense issues by politicians in Canada illustrates “short-termism and selfishness.”
“Canada has been allowed a free ride by dint of its geo-strategic position but also because there’s no consequences. It’s not as if the US has told Canada, ‘you’re going to be suspended from NATO if you don’t spend’, or ‘you’re not going to have access to US intelligence’ … None of that has happened (but), you know, maybe it should.”
Trump would likely concur.
Trump standing in front of a sign and a rollercoaster surrounded my military personnel and supplies.
NATO’s Trump problem
Former president and likely Republican nominee Donald Trump caused a ruckus across the pond over the weekend when he said that he would encourage Russia to attack any NATO member falling short on their defense spending goals (2% of GDP or more). Predictably, this got America’s European allies, most of whom were already pretty agitated about the prospect of a second Trump presidency, decidedly panicky.
It's easy to see why. During his first term in the White House, Trump repeatedly threatened to pull back from longstanding US security commitments to NATO as a lever to force European allies to shoulder more of the financial burden of their defense and to secure favorable trade concessions. His latest remarks are the first, however, explicitly encouraging Russia – a country openly hostile to NATO and currently leading a war of aggression in Ukraine – to attack other NATO members. Despite significant increases in defense spending since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, European allies are still largely dependent on US military capabilities to maintain credible deterrence. If Trump were to act on his threats at a time when war is raging on Europe’s doorstep, Ukraine’s prospects for victory are shrinking, and Russia’s expansionist appetite remains unsated, Europe would find itself in an unenviable position.
At the same time, there is a point beneath Trump’s threats. It is indeed the case that most of the largest NATO economies – including Germany, France, Italy, and Spain – have been underinvesting in their own defense for decades, confident that the “peace dividend” would last forever or else that they could free-ride on the US security guarantee indefinitely...despite continued pleas from US presidents of both parties for them to become more co-equal partners in European security. Yet they have been allowed to get away with this rather unacceptable state of affairs at their own peril, their consistent failure to invest in their own defense weakening NATO and emboldening Vladimir Putin as much as (if not more than) any Trump statement could.
In that sense, Trump’s escalating withdrawal/abandonment threats are important for both Europe and NATO in the long term, insofar as European leaders find them credible enough to finally start taking European security seriously. Asking them hasn’t worked. And the status quo is increasingly untenable to growing numbers of Americans.
Admittedly, the gambit is not without downsides. The threat of withdrawal/abandonment risks turning NATO, which has historically been widely understood as a strategic alliance in America’s own vital security interest, into a largely transactional arrangement. You may think transactional doesn’t sound so bad – they get something, we get something, everyone wins, right? But that’s not how military alliances and deterrence work. The moment it becomes clear that NATO is bound not by trust and shared interests but by quid pro quo, the security guarantee is rendered less credible in the eyes of adversaries (who know the US will not go to war to defend another country solely for money) and therefore less valuable for partners.
Most importantly, this assumes that Trump is playing hardball and just wants to leverage the US security guarantee to get the Europeans to pull more of their weight and to secure gains in other areas such as trade, much like he did in his first term. However, there are those who have worked with him, such as former national security adviser John Bolton, who believe that Trump doesn’t actually care whether NATO members increase their burden-sharing and is just looking for a pretext to abandon an alliance he has always seen as an inherently bad deal for America. According to Bolton, it's not a bluff, it’s not a negotiating tactic, it’s not even a shakedown: it’s his deeply-held policy stance. Big if true, as they say.
This would be the ultimate nightmare scenario for the Europeans, who have neither the leadership, the cash, nor the trust to fill the gaping hole left by the (de facto or de jure) withdrawal of the US security guarantee. Rather than galvanize the continent, political and military fragmentation would ensue. Some countries would try to “buy” bilateral security agreements from the Trump administration, while others would cozy up to Moscow instead. Yet others, such as the Nordic and Baltic states, would band together in regional security groupings.
The damage to European unity and security would be heavy. But so would the damage to America’s credibility and global standing.
A man administers the cholera vaccine to a child at a temporary cholera treatment center set up to deal with the latest deadly cholera outbreak in Lusaka, Zambia.
HARD NUMBERS: New cholera epidemic emerges, House impeaches Mayorkas, US inflation disappoints, Global military spending soars, Oil spill “blackens” Caribbean coastline
4,000: The worst outbreak of cholera in a decade has already claimed at least 4,000 lives in half a dozen countries of central and southern Africa. Experts say the resurgence of the waterborne illness is due to wetter weather, vaccine shortages, and underinvestment in water and sewage infrastructure.
214: The US House of Representatives voted late Tuesday to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 214-213, on charges that he has “willfully” refused to enforce border laws and breached public trust. This marks an escalation of Republican efforts to attack President Joe Biden and Democrats over immigration.
3.1: In the latest round of the monthly “did inflation ease more/less than we thought?” sweepstakes, the US came up short, posting annual consumer price growth of 3.1% in January, two-tenths of a point higher than expected. The data suggests the US Fed will chill a bit longer before cutting key interest rates, which currently sit between 5.25% and 5.5% as a result of a two-year-long campaign to tame inflation.
9: A nine-mile stretch of coastline in Trinidad and Tobago is “blackened,” the government says, following an oil spill by an unknown vessel last week. The origin and type of the boat, which ran aground and flipped over off the southwest coast of Tobago, is still unknown, and the situation is “not under control.” The disaster comes as the Caribbean nation prepares for its world-famous carnival, a major tourist draw.
2.2 trillion: There’s hardly a business like the arming business, it seems — global defense spending jumped 9% last year to a record high of $2.2 trillion, according to a new report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Ukraine war and NATO’s increased defense spending are a big part of the story, but with China growing more assertive and the Middle East embroiled in fresh conflict, the report warns that we are entering a global “era of insecurity.”
The Graphic Truth: Who's spending more/less on defense?
Global military expenditure rose by 3.7% in 2022, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The rise was driven by increased spending in Europe in response to Russia's war in Ukraine and by some Asian countries, such as Japan, to counter China's growing military muscle.
Ukraine made the biggest increase by far, shelling out seven times as much as it did the year before the Russian invasion. Russia's expenditure, meanwhile, rose nearly 10%. But, oddly enough, some countries actually invested less in defense despite global geopolitical uncertainty and rising threats. This included Turkey, which is suffering an inflation-fueled economic crisis that's eating into the military budget.
We take a look at how defense expenditure changed over the past year across the top 40 biggest spenders.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and daughter Kim Ju Ae attend a military parade in Pyongyang, North Korea.
What We're Watching: Parade in Pyongyang, Lula in DC, China balloon capabilities
North Korea shows off ICBMs and ... a 10-year-old girl
North Korea's supreme leader made a big splash to mark the 75th anniversary of the army on Thursday by showing off his shiny new toys and — maybe — his heir. At a huge military parade in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un beamed as he saluted a whopping 11 nuclear-armed ICBMs capable of reaching the US mainland, the largest number the regime has ever assembled in public, just two months after he demanded an "exponential increase" in the country's arsenal of nukes. Because each projectile has multiple nuclear warheads, a flurry could overwhelm US air defenses. What's more, the army also displayed a mockup of a new solid-fueled ICBM, which theoretically would be easier and faster to launch. But what really caught the attention of North Korea watchers was the presence beside the supreme leader of Kim Ju Ae, his 10-year-old daughter. The young girl, believed to be Kim's second child, met North Korea's top brass on Wednesday and has been seen five times alongside her dad in just two months, fueling speculation that Kim might someday pick her as his successor. That would be a tectonic shift for North Korea, not because of her age — after all, her father grew up around generals — but due to the country's deeply patriarchal society. Still, what matters more than gender is being a Kim, and right now the country's second most powerful person is Kim Yo Jong, the supreme leader's famously feisty sister.
Lula goes to the White House
Brazil’s new left-wing President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva visits Joe Biden at the White House on Friday in a bid to reset bilateral ties after a rocky few years under his far-right predecessor, Trump-fan Jair Bolsonaro. Biden and Lula will find much to agree on beyond a shared disdain for their predecessors. Climate change is one thing as Lula has put the environment at the center of his agenda these days and will look to get Biden to join his Amazon fund to protect the rainforest. But things will get dicier as talk turns to Ukraine, where Lula has blamed Zelensky and Putin equally for the war, and won’t send military aid to the Ukrainians. His proposal to form a “Peace Club” to negotiate an end to the conflict is likely to get a cool reception at the White House, especially since Lula wants it to include China. Speaking of China, that’s an area where Biden will need to tread carefully himself: Washington’s biggest global rival is Brazil’s number one trade partner. Hanging over all of this? Bolsonaro, who is still kicking it in South Florida to avoid facing charges back home for inciting the “January 6” style riots that followed Lula’s inauguration last month.
US: China’s balloon was equipped to gather intel
Washington is popping holes in Beijing’s claims that the balloon it shot down over South Carolina’s coast last weekend was simply a weather device. The State Department released declassified intelligence on Thursday showing that the balloon was equipped with antennas capable of “intelligence collection operations” that could intercept calls on communications devices. What’s more, the US believes this was just one of many balloons from a wider fleet of Chinese aircraft that have floated over 40 countries. Federal investigators are still combing through the debris for answers, but some Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not providing more information soon enough. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives, in a rare show of unity, united on Thursday to pass a nonbinding resolution 419-0 condemning the incident as a “brazen violation of United States sovereignty." The balloon crisis has dashed hopes – along with Sec. of State Antony Blinken’s planned visit last week to Beijing – of improving US-China relations in the near term. And, as Ian Bremmer wrote for GZERO this week, this episode makes it clear that “Washington and Beijing will struggle mightily to prevent a drift toward escalation.”CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece incorrectly stated that China is Brazil's number one investment partner. China is Brazil's biggest trade partner, but the top spot for investment is the US. We regret the error.
who spends the most on the military?
The Graphic Truth: Who spends the most on the military?
Russian President Vladimir Putin upped the ante this week by announcing a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists to Ukraine. (For context: Russia invaded Ukraine in February with 150,000 troops.) This development, analysts say, is one of the surest signs to date that Putin’s war is flailing. In fact, since the beginning of the war, observers have been stunned by the ineptitude and ill-preparedness of the Russian military considering that almost 11% of the Kremlin’s total budget goes towards military expenditure. How does Russia’s military investment – and active military personnel count – compare to other G20 nations? We take a look.
This article comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media, a subsidiary of Eurasia Group that offers balanced, nonpartisan reporting, and analysis of foreign affairs.