One of Trump’s constant cries is that American allies aren’t spending enough on their militaries and that the US is, thus, carrying them.
While there is a temptation to scorn this argument because it was made by Trump, it has a fair bit of truth to it, as Matt Stoller suggested today:
The American military umbrella is a bad deal for America and a good deal for our “allies.” Japan gets protected channels to Middle Eastern oil, for free. Germany gets protection from Russia, for free. They all export to us at terms unfavorable to our own industries/middle class.
The problem with this is that it is, well, true.
And that Europe “needs” America for defense against Russia is absurd:
Let us be clear, the EU’s population is 508 million. When the UK leaves, it will be 447 million.
Russia’s population is 143 million.
The EU minus Britain has a GDP of 18.1 trillion (purchasing power parity), Russia has an economy of 3.5 trillion (ppp). Germany alone has a GDP (ppp) of four trillion.
If Europe “needs” the US, it’s because it can’t be bothered to raise a proper army. That’s all. It is genuinely free-riding.
Chinese and American flags flying together
But then NATO is a large part of why Russia is a “threat”. The expansion of NATO, which Bush Sr. promised Gorbachev would not happen, is a large part of why Russia has armed up.
It’s not clear that NATO should even exist. Its purpose was to resist the Warsaw Pact and the USSR, neither of which exist. Russia has a lot of nukes, and is relatively strong militarily, but it is no USSR and has no grand alliance facing NATO. It is not a threat unless terribly mismanaged. (Which, I suppose, it has been.)
Disband NATO. Let the Europeans take care of their own defense, or lay prostate before the Russians as they choose.
Japan is a trickier proposition. What American military presence there does is simple enough: It prevents Japan from needing its own nuclear weapons. The same is true of American bases in South Korea. Leave and those two countries have to nuclearize or become Chinese satrapies (and Japan will need a much larger navy).
It’s also worth noting that the US didn’t start protecting “Japan’s oil.” The US needed foreign oil too; it is only recently, under Obama, that the US has again reached petrocarbon self-sufficiency and is able to say, “We’re protecting other people’s oil.”
WWII was won by the powers who had access to more oil. Generals and admirals at the time understood the war was, to a large extent, about oil.
America may not need foreign oil now, but it did for decades and that is why it protected maritime oil trade.
In general, however, a US withdrawal from its forward bases will be a good thing. A rebalancing of trade will also be a good thing, though it will hurt as it happens (Trump is not doing it well). Deliberately offshoring and outsourcing the US (and Britain’s) industrial base led, more or less directly, to Trump and other social ills. It created a group of people who have lost for 40 to 50 years. Their parents had better lives. They had better lives. They know it. You cannot lie to them with BS statistics and pretend otherwise.
So they are willing to vote for and support anyone who seems like they will wreck a system which doesn’t serve them. Maybe what happens will be worse, but what’s happening right now is shit.
This is not contradicted by Trump’s support from red-state elites. They are also scared, because they also know their situation is precarious and that power and wealth has flowed away from them. And they rule over Hell. It isn’t always better to reign in Hell.
So the world is changing. It was changing before Trump: The Trans-Pacific Partnership was intended to be a trade bloc AGAINST China.
Note carefully Stoller’s hostility to China. It is constant. The American elite is finally reorienting. They don’t see Russia as a primary threat. They’re moving away from caring about the Middle East as they now have enough oil of their own and see a post-oil future coming. They know the rising great/super power is China.
They want to reorient their alliances against China. The price of keeping NATO will be keeping China OUT. When Germany said they wanted to do more business with China, Stoller was angry and said it was an argument against NATO. No Huawei, no China.
The world is very likely to divide into trade blocs–probably two, maybe three.
China rises. The US moves to protect its position.
Great power politics continue, as they ever have.
There is no end to history, save an end to humans. Only fools ever thought so.
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nihil obstet
To have a large military unit based on dishonesty about why you have it cannot lead to anything good. As long as foreign policy has to be modified to justify a large military alliance, there will be obstacles to cooperation and peace. Get rid of NATO. When you can show a genuine, specific need for threatening use of state violence, address it through specific treaties.
Jeff Wegerson
I have noticed Stoller’s consistant hostility against China. I’m not comfortable with it because I am reminded of McCarthy era hostility against the Soviet Union. That one was handled badly and exacerbated perhaps more than helped. I think I get where Stoller is coming from but I think I also distrust his feel for the best way forward.
So I very much appreciate your take. Thanks.
NR
I think you mean “lay prostrate,” Ian.
Other than that, good post.
different clue
No, NATO should not exist. Its purpose was to help the EuroAmerican countries protect themselves and eachother from the expansion of Revolutionary Communism which happened to be based in the USSR. When the Warsaw Pact and then the USSR itself dissolved, the reason for NATO dissolved with them.
But the Lords of NATO found that continuing NATO was a very power-profitable and money-profitable racket. So they repurposed NATO to be against “Russia” and worked very hard and steadily to drive Russia into a position of victimized resistance to NATO aggression by pushing NATO right to the borders of Russia itself. They also transformed NATO into a EUroMerican Colonial empire force to control events in all kinds of places beyond the borders of NATO.
The EUroLords of EUrope could defect from NATO any time they want to. They could establish their own NEATO ( North East Atlantic Treaty Organization) any time they want to. WithOUT “East Europe” and withOUT Canada and withOUT America. They are free and sovereign enough to do that. They don’t do that because they don’t want to do that.
Perhaps another term of Trump will make America such a disgusting and unreliable partner that the Lords of EUrope will be DRIVEN to quit NATO out of sheer exasperation and exhaustion. If so, that would be a genuine positive Trumpian achievement. America could finally bring all its soldiers-held-hostage home from the EUroNATO countries of their captivity.
Why is Stoller against China? One would have to subject him to a courtroom-style hostile interrogation to find out why. I will speculate that he blames China for “taking” so much of America’s survival industry away from America. He confuses China with the International Free Trade Conspirators who are the people who SENT all of America’s survival industry away to China. If Stoller blames China for that, Stoller reveals the limits of his intellect.
Tom
https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/9/20/egypt-protests-spread-to-prisons-as-sisi-posters-removed
Egyptian Uprising… Again… If the military again sides with Sisi, it will be another massacre unless the protesters fight to win. Unfortunately, if Syria is anything to go by, the Regime is so embedded into the fabric of society, that peaceful change is not possible without slaughtering the Regime’s backers in total war. This is a fight to the knife for the Regime and they’ll burn the country if they can’t have it.
Hugh
Europe is a fiction. As I have pointed out ad infinitum, the destruction of Greece, Brexit, German mercantilism, the resulting economic chaos in the Southern Tier, the failure of German leadership, and the turn to authoritarianism in the Eastern Tier highlight the fictional and unsustainable nature of the EU/EZ. European countries have shown a complete inability to manage a European economy. The reason they need and will continue to need a US-led NATO is because they have a similar incapacity to provide for their common defense. Even with all the American failures and the cringeworthy unreliability of the Trump Administration, this remains true. NATO is a losing proposition for the US. The problem is that a US withdrawal from NATO would destabilize further a Europe already falling apart. The costs of that would likely be far higher than those we are currently paying.
Bill H
NATO exists to assure that European nations will buy American weaponry. My nephew retired as a colonel from the Army and is in Georgia as we speak, training them in US weaponry and assuring that their military is compatible with NATO standards. So yes, NATO should exist if you are a US weapons manufacturer. If you are a US taxpayer, NATO should be disbanded forthwith.
ven
Indirectly relevant – but important with respect to understanding the agenda of control, within and without. Chris Hedges:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/our-invisible-government/
Herman
@Hugh,
I agree with all of your points. The same thing is true of our presence in the Asia-Pacific region. If the US withdrew from the Pacific Rim it would cause an increase in competition between the Asian powers and would disrupt the region. For all of its faults American hegemony did produce a certain degree of stability in the world by suppressing great power competition which helped to maintain the world capitalist system and this probably did benefit Americans, Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans and the Taiwanese, at least for a certain period of time.
The question is how long the United States can maintain its hegemony in the face of a rising China, political and social dysfunction at home and abroad (see the mess in Europe) as well as climate change and other environmental problems. American hegemony is the bedrock of the current global capitalist system so when it goes things will probably deteriorate even further.
bruce wilder
Europe is a fiction that a great many Europeans apparently believe in, even if they do seem to lose the plot quite easily.
The fundamental problem of political governance for the modern world since the dawn of modernity in the quattrocento has always been how to produce and maintain a ruling class that was both reasonably competent and at least passably useful or beneficial for the governed.
The Roman Empire, and the Hellenic civilization over which it presided, provided a cautionary example of what was possible to achieve as well as of what the hazards were: among its legacies a bizarre religion that celebrates the suffering of the powerless and submissive. That religion has seemingly lost its hold on 21st century Europe. Monarchy and aristocracy, too, also a legacy of the late-Roman imperial model, seems also to be mostly decorative, rather than structural for European politics today.
The model for European politics today appears to be centralized bureaucracy, of the type produced by 19th century state-building in Europe, but elevated above gauche nationalism. The EU institutions, as I have remarked before, remind me in their complexity and with their neutered Parliament at Strasbourg and their obsession with a kind of law only the French could imagine works in human affairs (I cannot thank the EU enough for the great privilege of having to click 20 times a day my acknowledgement of cookies on the web — what a boon to mankind!).
Michel’s “Iron Law” applies. Every regime gives rise to an elite invested in keeping the regime alive even after the institution’s founding purpose is obsolete (as exemplified by NATO) and this is true now of the full panoply of EU institutions. The “oligarchy” in charge only wants adaptive change that adapts to enhance the position of the elite that runs the EU. The politicians who are the visible heads have conspicuously built careers leveraging the EU institutions as further paths on a cursus honorum, and much the same is true for a second and even third tier of civil servants and the like.
The trouble arises from two sources, in accord with generational change and degeneration of purpose. First, as genuine purpose is forgotten or subverted, design fit for purpose is compromised. Second, as generations pass, competence to manage the design is lost.
I think NATO and the U.S. military and foreign policy establishments in general are pretty far gone at this point: the corruption and stupidity are extreme indeed, on full display in Syria and Libya, the blowback for Europe obvious. The struggle with Russia over Ukraine and natural gas is bizarre. The situation with Turkey is serious. And, that does not even touch on the blindness it takes to ally with the Saudi’s and Pakistan.
The determined neoliberalism of the EU is a symptom of takeover by an elite that has subverted the founding purpose of the European project, originally a deeply thought out scheme to end the expression of nationalist rivalry in military conflict and imperialism abroad.
Though obviously many American leaders labor under a delusion of military superiority, and much of the general population shares this delusion, I think it is widely appreciated among those paying attention that this delusion is a delusion.
I am not as sure that European neoliberalism is as yet regarded either by the ruling classes or the broader public with anything like the simmering distrust and cynicism that surround U.S. foreign and military policy.
bruce wilder
I think Stoller imagines that China as bad guy is a persuasive narrative frame for many people who are not inclined to hear him out on policy arcana. As Stoller tries to argue in favor of an American national or public purpose to people hostile to or cynical about the possibility of such purpose, he finds China — a country that has successfully pursued a fairly coherent national purpose — a convenient foil: a good example and a bad example.
Where this goes is neoliberal elite betrayal by Americans, the collusion of Clintonites and Bushies with an innocent China in policy that benefitted much of China by screwing over the American working class. Tell that story and see how fast you lose your platform.
different clue
@bruce wilder,
Telling that story will get you de-platformed from off the mainstream platforms. But it may not get you deplatformed off the many side-stream and backwater platforms which exist. And it will not get you deplatformed from off of various obscure little internet platforms.
For example, pointing out the facts about how the Pelosi-Clintonite-Bushobama traitors engineered the extermination of the American thingmaking economy through such International Free Trade Conspiracy ploys as WTO, NAFTA, MFN for China, etc. ( which the vile Clintonite filth who write, read, and comment at The Confluence all support) won’t get you or me deplatformed here at Ian Welsh. Would that story get you or me deplatformed over at Tony Wikrent’s blog? Or over at Naked Capitalism?
(You have to mock and insult Magical Monetary Thinking several times in a row to get deplatformed over at Naked Capitalism.)
Jack Parsons
I beg to differ. I believe that NATO was never about Russia, that it was always about controlling the Middle East and Africa. Yes, it has side effects of cementing American power in Europe. So, after the SU fell, why would we possibly want to disband NATO?
StewartM
Re: Europe’s ‘free ride’ insofar as maintaining military capability:
This was always a deliberate calculation by the US political elites. If Europe and Japan were always dependent on the US military protection, then–when the US put its foot down on an issue–then ‘our friends and allies’ would have no choice but to sulkily go along with any mandate the US issued. It was a way of maintaining the US empire.
And since it was our decision to deliberately create this state of affairs, Trump and others shouldn’t go along crying that “they’re getting a free ride”. If Europe rearmed to the extent that they could, they would blow off the US and actually have–gosh!–and independent foreign policy. Plus lots of people in Asia look warily at the prospect of a rearmed Japan, just like more than a few in Europe take pause at the notion of a rearmed, independent, Germany.
If the budget hawks really want to do something about US military expenses, then there’s lots of ways that it could be cut and still maintain–or even increase–capability. Or they could also (ahem) raise taxes on the rich again to pre-Reagan or pre-1964 levels.
bruce wilder
@dc
And, what do you suppose the readership of Naked Capitalism amounts to? Generously, should we guess 150,000? Less than 1/10th of 1% of the American electorate?
At best, I think NC cannot be more than one-third of American Conservative, a website that NC relentlessly feeds and is not exactly “left” and can barely be counted as influential in U.S. politics. And, NC is not even one-tenth of RealClearPolitics or DailyKos
The old joke that no one on the internet knows you are a dog has corollaries in the Power Law distributions that make it so easy to find yourself way out on a long tail where you do not even realize how marginal you really are.
different clue
@bruce wilder,
” We work in the dark, we do what we can.”
Hugh
Size doesn’t always matter. Write your own joke. The PTB don’t read Ian’s blog, but there are certainly some of their staff who do and pass long bits and pieces of his and our analyses to their masters, –if only so that they can sound connected to reality in some bowlderized fashion.