Bartlett: Defense Budget Too High?

Bruce Bartlett writes:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates gave a speech in Brussels on Friday in which he berated our allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for not carrying their weight in terms of providing resources for the common defense. “For all but a handful of allies, defense budgets — in absolute terms, as a share of economic output — have been chronically starved for adequate funding for a long time, with the shortfalls compounding on themselves each year,” Mr. Gates said.

An examination of the latest NATO data shows that in 2010, the United States spent 5.4 percent of its gross domestic product on its military — twice as much as spent by Britain and three to four times as much as most of our NATO allies, as shown in the following table.

A crucial reason for this gap is that the United States spends almost as much today as it did during the Cold War. Every other NATO country spends substantially less.

Secretary Gates also made another point about military spending by our allies: they spend much more on personnel and less on equipment than the United States. “The result is that investment accounts for future modernization and other capabilities not directly related to Afghanistan are being squeezed out — as we are seeing today over Libya,” he cautioned.

According to NATO, the United States spends 46.7 percent of its military budget on personnel. All but five other NATO countries spend more — often considerably more. The average for all NATO countries other than the United States is 56.7 percent of their military budgets spent on personnel, with a number of countries spending two-thirds to three-quarters.