Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Germany Will Miss Its NATO Defense Spending Goals

Two German Eurofighter jets simulate the interception of a plane over the Baltic sea November 1, 2018. REUTERS/Sabine Siebold

Reuters: Germany could miss even reduced NATO defense spending goal: document

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz has cast doubt over the government’s already watered-down pledge to NATO allies of spending 1.5 percent of economic output on defense by 2024, a Finance Ministry document obtained by Reuters showed on Monday.

Germany is under pressure from the United States and other NATO members to increase its military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, in line with a target agreed by NATO members in 2014 and reaffirmed in subsequent years.

Military spending remains a source of great tension within Germany’s ruling coalition, with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives pushing for quicker increases in defense budgets but Scholz’s Social Democrats riding the brakes.

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WNU Editor: Why am I not surprised.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you read the story you learn a novel German concept. Development aid is the same as defense spending. Money spent maintaining fighter aircraft is the same as money spent on feeding and housing Libyans. In the Germany way of thinking.

So when Germany says its increasing defense spending, they also include “and development aid”. So how much goes for real spending on defense vs social welfare programs far from Germany? Probably more to the later.

Anonymous said...

if you do not know why do you imply or guess? ah, bias