Barney Frank: It's Time to Rearm Germany and Japan
Wealthy allies have had a free ride for too long.
By BARNEY FRANK
Politico EU
Politico EU
October 22, 2015
No issue in next year’s election will have more impact on our day-to-day lives than the Republican pledge to spend hundreds of billions more on the military than will occur in a Democratic administration. Since it’s accompanied by the party’s unanimous opposition to any net increase in federal revenue and a promise to substantially reduce the deficit, the idea of boosting defense spending inevitably will mean serious cutbacks in all other goals. It’s not just efforts to improve our quality of life at home that will suffer. Billions less will be available for international efforts to combat disease, fight hunger, support economic development or help poor countries deal with climate change.
It’s this reality of America’s tough budgetary outlook that leads me to insist that our wealthy Asian and European allies stop essentially free-riding on American taxpayers — and to argue that my fellow liberals should strongly support (but probably won’t) an increased military role for both Japan and Germany.
Congressional Republicans and presidential candidates — with the intermittent exception of Rand Paul — demand that the world’s threats require significant increases, even on top of the current high level of American military spending. I simply don’t understand why Republicans accept the view that the entire burden of providing the world’s military force should be borne by American taxpayers, even leaving aside my belief that advocates of these huge increases in American military spending greatly exaggerate both the threat that disorder overseas presents to us, and even more, to what extent America could effectively resolve these problems by military intervention.
Of all our allies, only two other countries do what they can to provide for their own defense against threatened aggression: Israel and South Korea. Both countries sensibly and effectively arm themselves against potential attacks from belligerent neighbors. Similarly, one likeminded nation — France — consistently uses appropriate military means to disrupt bad actors. Counterintuitively to many on the American right, who heaped scorn on France when it wisely disagreed with our mistaken invasion of Iraq, the country has played a constructive and effective role in fighting Islamic terrorists in its former African colonies. Yet all three of these countries are, in effect, responses to regional situations of special concern to the particular country involved.
In the rest of the world, we’re left on our own. When the focus is broader — when the questions are how to provide freedom of the seas for world commerce, or counter threats to use force in violation of international borders, or to keep powerful, authoritarian regimes from intimidating their smaller neighbors into making unjustified concessions — the rest of the world seems very happy to let America be the answer.
Both Germany and Japan have an interest in deterring bad behavior even more immediate than our own.
As I’ve previously written, those of us who favor significant reduction in America’s defense spending understand that there are bad actors around the globe, and that the good guys — working in some cases with the less bad ones — should collectively possess the force necessary to deter them from aggressive action, and combat them in certain cases, if deterrence fails.
This is particularly true with regard to the two most important disrupters — China and Russia. Russia’s assault on Ukraine and China’s assertion of sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea are both troubling — especially as indications that worse may follow, particularly from Putin. American defense planning certainly must take these threats into account. There should be no chance, for example, of losing our military superiority over China for the foreseeable future, and it’s critical that our Asian allies should not feel helpless against Chinese naval aggression. Neither should the nations on Russia’s border fear that the West will simply stand aside if Putin’s appetite for their territory grows. (In fact, I believe we and the Europeans have given too little aid to Ukraine.)
This is where German and Japanese rearmament should come in. Maintaining in Asia and Europe the military capability necessary to counter the Chinese and Russian threats should not remain almost exclusively America’s responsibility — as it now effectively is. Both Germany and Japan have an interest in deterring bad behavior even more immediate than our own, and both have the manpower as well as the economic and technological resources to make a significant contribution to a joint defense effort. Yet while the situations aren’t entirely the same, both hesitate to rearm because the world (and they themselves) believe responsibility for the immorality of their actions leading up to and during World War II forbid it.
Paradoxically, we continue to punish Germany and Japan for the horrors they inflicted on the world decades ago by, in part, freeing their resources to be spent on their domestic well-being. Instead, we bear most of the cost of defending them from external danger. Amid a presidential campaign so focused on the economy and growth, would our own economic performance not be improved if we were to spend as small a percentage of our gross domestic product on the military as they spend? (We spend about 3.5 percent of our GDP on defense, according to the World Bank, while Japan and Germany each spend closer to just 1 percent of theirs.)
There are two primary objections to our encouraging German and Japanese assumption of a major role in their own defense. One is moral. But urging both wealthy countries to share the burden of their defense with us in no way minimizes the depth of their crimes against humanity 70 years ago and more. It follows, instead, from the view that whatever witches’ brew of evil intent, deep-seated prejudice, economic deprivation and susceptibility to demagoguery produced the Germany and Japan of the late 1930s was a product specific to that time — and not evidence that the people of either country carry some taint of blood that renders them forever untrustworthy.
The practical objection is that neighboring nations, especially those that bore the brunt of Japanese and German aggression, will be unsettled by their return to major power status. I understand why this feeling exists in South Korea, and our response should be sympathetic — but firm. Given the very large amount of money — and lives — America has spent and continues to spend on South Korea’s defense, and the beneficial impact possible South Korean-Japanese cooperation could have in restraining Chinese ambitions, their 70-year-old grievances will have to give way. As to China and to Russia, our answer is easier: Stop threatening Europe and Asia, and your neighbors won’t feel the need to arm themselves against you.
Germany and Japan aren’t the only allies from whom we should seek more contribution to the common defense. Our NATO allies should also be given a clear deadline. The population, wealth and industrial base of Western and Central Europe — including non-NATO nations with an interest in restraining Russia — is now well beyond what is needed to keep that continent secure. Three years from now is plenty of time for the Europeans to become militarily self-sufficient — i.e., for them to learn to do without us.
Insisting that our wealthy Asian and European allies stop essentially free-riding on American taxpayers will not end our need to continue to maintain by far the strongest military force in the world — a military that possesses a considerable margin of superiority over any rival. But if we combine the insistence that our allies contribute as they should with a more realistic understanding of when military force must be deployed we will fully meet that need for at least $100 billion a year less than we now spend.
No issue in next year’s election will have more impact on our day-to-day lives than the Republican pledge to spend hundreds of billions more on the military than will occur in a Democratic administration. Since it’s accompanied by the party’s unanimous opposition to any net increase in federal revenue and a promise to substantially reduce the deficit, the idea of boosting defense spending inevitably will mean serious cutbacks in all other goals. It’s not just efforts to improve our quality of life at home that will suffer. Billions less will be available for international efforts to combat disease, fight hunger, support economic development or help poor countries deal with climate change.
It’s this reality of America’s tough budgetary outlook that leads me to insist that our wealthy Asian and European allies stop essentially free-riding on American taxpayers — and to argue that my fellow liberals should strongly support (but probably won’t) an increased military role for both Japan and Germany.
Congressional Republicans and presidential candidates — with the intermittent exception of Rand Paul — demand that the world’s threats require significant increases, even on top of the current high level of American military spending. I simply don’t understand why Republicans accept the view that the entire burden of providing the world’s military force should be borne by American taxpayers, even leaving aside my belief that advocates of these huge increases in American military spending greatly exaggerate both the threat that disorder overseas presents to us, and even more, to what extent America could effectively resolve these problems by military intervention.
Of all our allies, only two other countries do what they can to provide for their own defense against threatened aggression: Israel and South Korea. Both countries sensibly and effectively arm themselves against potential attacks from belligerent neighbors. Similarly, one likeminded nation — France — consistently uses appropriate military means to disrupt bad actors. Counterintuitively to many on the American right, who heaped scorn on France when it wisely disagreed with our mistaken invasion of Iraq, the country has played a constructive and effective role in fighting Islamic terrorists in its former African colonies. Yet all three of these countries are, in effect, responses to regional situations of special concern to the particular country involved.
In the rest of the world, we’re left on our own. When the focus is broader — when the questions are how to provide freedom of the seas for world commerce, or counter threats to use force in violation of international borders, or to keep powerful, authoritarian regimes from intimidating their smaller neighbors into making unjustified concessions — the rest of the world seems very happy to let America be the answer.
Both Germany and Japan have an interest in deterring bad behavior even more immediate than our own.
As I’ve previously written, those of us who favor significant reduction in America’s defense spending understand that there are bad actors around the globe, and that the good guys — working in some cases with the less bad ones — should collectively possess the force necessary to deter them from aggressive action, and combat them in certain cases, if deterrence fails.
This is particularly true with regard to the two most important disrupters — China and Russia. Russia’s assault on Ukraine and China’s assertion of sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea are both troubling — especially as indications that worse may follow, particularly from Putin. American defense planning certainly must take these threats into account. There should be no chance, for example, of losing our military superiority over China for the foreseeable future, and it’s critical that our Asian allies should not feel helpless against Chinese naval aggression. Neither should the nations on Russia’s border fear that the West will simply stand aside if Putin’s appetite for their territory grows. (In fact, I believe we and the Europeans have given too little aid to Ukraine.)
This is where German and Japanese rearmament should come in. Maintaining in Asia and Europe the military capability necessary to counter the Chinese and Russian threats should not remain almost exclusively America’s responsibility — as it now effectively is. Both Germany and Japan have an interest in deterring bad behavior even more immediate than our own, and both have the manpower as well as the economic and technological resources to make a significant contribution to a joint defense effort. Yet while the situations aren’t entirely the same, both hesitate to rearm because the world (and they themselves) believe responsibility for the immorality of their actions leading up to and during World War II forbid it.
Paradoxically, we continue to punish Germany and Japan for the horrors they inflicted on the world decades ago by, in part, freeing their resources to be spent on their domestic well-being. Instead, we bear most of the cost of defending them from external danger. Amid a presidential campaign so focused on the economy and growth, would our own economic performance not be improved if we were to spend as small a percentage of our gross domestic product on the military as they spend? (We spend about 3.5 percent of our GDP on defense, according to the World Bank, while Japan and Germany each spend closer to just 1 percent of theirs.)
There are two primary objections to our encouraging German and Japanese assumption of a major role in their own defense. One is moral. But urging both wealthy countries to share the burden of their defense with us in no way minimizes the depth of their crimes against humanity 70 years ago and more. It follows, instead, from the view that whatever witches’ brew of evil intent, deep-seated prejudice, economic deprivation and susceptibility to demagoguery produced the Germany and Japan of the late 1930s was a product specific to that time — and not evidence that the people of either country carry some taint of blood that renders them forever untrustworthy.
The practical objection is that neighboring nations, especially those that bore the brunt of Japanese and German aggression, will be unsettled by their return to major power status. I understand why this feeling exists in South Korea, and our response should be sympathetic — but firm. Given the very large amount of money — and lives — America has spent and continues to spend on South Korea’s defense, and the beneficial impact possible South Korean-Japanese cooperation could have in restraining Chinese ambitions, their 70-year-old grievances will have to give way. As to China and to Russia, our answer is easier: Stop threatening Europe and Asia, and your neighbors won’t feel the need to arm themselves against you.
Germany and Japan aren’t the only allies from whom we should seek more contribution to the common defense. Our NATO allies should also be given a clear deadline. The population, wealth and industrial base of Western and Central Europe — including non-NATO nations with an interest in restraining Russia — is now well beyond what is needed to keep that continent secure. Three years from now is plenty of time for the Europeans to become militarily self-sufficient — i.e., for them to learn to do without us.
Insisting that our wealthy Asian and European allies stop essentially free-riding on American taxpayers will not end our need to continue to maintain by far the strongest military force in the world — a military that possesses a considerable margin of superiority over any rival. But if we combine the insistence that our allies contribute as they should with a more realistic understanding of when military force must be deployed we will fully meet that need for at least $100 billion a year less than we now spend.
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