At meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund last week in Washington, many powerbrokers aired a familiar concern: “a United States government so bitterly divided that it is on the verge of ceding the global economic stage it built at the end of World War II and has largely directed ever since.” Those fears are warranted. However, they echo a larger and more damaging criticism that America is withdrawing from its international security leadership. This is not correct.
It is easy to forget the continuing scale of America’s military spending and overseas commitments. The U.S. accounts for at least two-fifths of global military spending. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, U.S. military expenses last year of about $600 billion equaled that of the next ten biggest spenders combined – six of whom are U.S. allies. Britain’s Ministry of Defense expects that even as China’s defense budget swells, it should not match America’s for about thirty years. America maintains about 170,000 troops abroad in 150 countries. The U.S. continues to guarantee the safe passage of international seaborne trade, including in critical spots like the Straits of Hormuz and the Malacca Strait. The U.S. accounts for three-fourths of all NATO spending, and sustains Europe’s missile shield. America sells arms to 73 countries, including 17 in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Even in a multipolar international system, America still undergirds global security. Our allies aid this worthwhile endeavor. Princeton Professor of Politics and International Affairs John Ikenberry notes that where Russia has eight military allies and China only one (North Korea), America enjoys the support of sixty. The problem is that even as America underwrites our allies’ security, they often free-ride on our guarantees.
That is particularly true of Europe. The Economist says Britain’s military spending has shrunk so much in recent years that “Ray Odierno, America’s army chief, wonders whether in the future Britain will have enough soldiers to work alongside a [single] American division” Acccording to the Economist, Britain has been largely ambivalent to close threats from instability in the Ukraine and from the Islamic State, even as it has pursued a foreign policy that “kowtows to China.” The French and German militaries are similarly underfunded. The result is a Europe that cannot deal with even near threats without American help.
Like Germany, South Korea and Japan house large American troop contingents. While South Korea maintains a large, modern fighting force, Japan’s security depends substantially upon stationed U.S. forces. As with Germany, because of growing external threats it would not be imprudent for this stable liberal democracy to better fund its defense capabilities.
America’s eleven Middle Eastern allies require somewhat different attentions. Although the U.S. ensures those allies’ safety, we should be careful about how closely we coordinate with them. America has a mixed record on arms sales to the region, and Middle Eastern states are historically fragile. Arms we supplied to Iran were still Iran’s after the 1979 Revolution; arms we supplied to the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980’s became the Taliban’s; and, according to the New York Times, U.S. soldiers were exposed in the Iraq War to chemical weapons we had sold to Saddam Hussein. America’s interests do not always cohere with those of powerful factions within our Middle Eastern allies’ states – 15 of the 19 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, and a 2009 Wikileaks cable quotes then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.” The U.S. is also phasing down two unsuccessful, hugely costly nation-building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The U.S. should reduce or hold steady weapons sales to Middle Eastern allies. The New York Times reports that the U.S. is instead selling allies more advanced weaponry, like F-16s and Predator drones, and in the future, possibly even F-35s, “considered to be the jewel of America’s future arsenal of weapons.” With continued arms sales America more tightly links itself to, and assumes more responsibility for, intricate sectarian wars.
Allies who free ride on America’s military harm U.S. national interests in several ways. While free-riding gains America some diplomatic and economic leverage with allies, it makes American leaders more likely to confuse vital and peripheral security interests, as in Iraq. If we are accustomed to putting out fires everywhere, we think less about whether one is bigger than another. This is especially pertinent to the Middle East, where our allies often lobby America to wage wars in which we have little interest. There are also costs. President Eisenhower articulated them best. “The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat,” Eisenhower said.
Henry Kissinger said that since 1945 the United States has, “in five wars and on several other occasions,” spent American blood to redeem its principles in “distant corners of the world. No other country would have had the idealism and the resources to take on such a range of challenges or the capacity to succeed in so many of them.”
America should continue its security commitments around the world. But the range of challenges we can take on is constrained by what our allies compel us to do for them.
