Those 'Free Rider' Allies Are Paying Up
March 28, 2016 11:55 AM EST
By Tobin Harshaw
Defense alliances are complicated things, but in the U.S. we have bipartisan clarity on one thing: Our allies are letting us down.
“If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection," Republican frontrunner Donald Trump said this weekend, "I don’t think it would be around.” He has also shamed America's top defense partners in Asia: Japan and South Korea. "We have 28,000 people on the border separating South Korea from this maniac in North Korea. We get nothing," he said. "We get nothing. They're making a fortune."
President Barack Obama has a cooler demeanor, but the same icy attitude toward longstanding military partners. “Free riders aggravate me,” he told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, not long after informing U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron that the longtime "special relationship" between the nations was at risk unless the Brits met the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on the military. He also accused the Gulf Arab nations of "pushing us to act but then showing an unwillingness to put any skin in the game.”
To some extent, this criticism is valid. Even before being pinched by the global financial crisis, most NATO nations repeatedly cut their defense budgets, failing to meet the 2 percent benchmark. On the other hand, this viewpoint -- part of what my colleague Eli Lake calls the Obama-Trump Doctrine -- ignores some facts.
Japan, Korea and European countries to some extent subsidize the U.S. troop presence inside their borders; Germany pays over $1 billion and Japan upped its 2016 contribution by 1.4 percent, to $1.6 billion. Recall, too, that the allies have been there for American-initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-28/those-free-rider-allies-are-paying-up
