With the Ukraine crisis, the military factor in security policy has once again become clearly visible within Europe. Will this reverse the trend of recent years to reduce military spending in Europe? Lieutenant Colonel Herwig Jedlaucnik, a member of staff at the Institute for Strategy and Security Policy at the National Defense Academy in Vienna, has analysed European defence budgets for Militär Aktuell.
A gradual reduction in military spending has been taking place in Europe since the 1980s. Following the escalation of the situation in Ukraine, combined with the deterioration in relations between Western countries and Russia, some Nordic countries, but above all the countries of Eastern Europe, have now increased their military spending again. In most of Europe, however, the Ukraine crisis has not triggered a strategic rethink with corresponding budgetary consequences; the long-term trend of reducing European military spending has (for the time being) hardly been slowed down. Europe as a whole reduced its military expenditure, measured as a proportion of GDP, by around 5% in 2014 and by a further 1.6% in 2015. The reduction in 2015 roughly corresponds to the 10-year average. In 2015, Europe will therefore spend just under 1.5% of its GDP on defense purposes. Although it can be assumed that there will be a slight nominal increase in military spending in many Western and Central European countries once the European economy recovers, European defense budgets are likely to fall below 1.5% of GDP in the coming years. Although all European countries combined will spend almost 300 billion US dollars (272 billion euros) on their defense in 2015, they will only account for 16 percent of global military activities. Europe’s share has therefore almost halved in the last 20 years! The situation is somewhat different for the powers directly bordering Europe: Russia stepped up its military efforts in 2014 and 2015 and will probably spend 4.5 percent of GDP on this in 2015. Turkey, on the other hand, is allocating 2.3 to 2.4 percent of its GDP to its defense budget. In the medium term, the trend is towards a separation between European frontline and staging states. The states bordering Russia, its vassal state Belarus or Turkey will probably provide around 2% of GDP for military spending, as will France and, with certain question marks, possibly the UK. The latter two need the corresponding military resources to secure their non-European territories and interests and to maintain their nuclear capabilities. The NATO stage states, on the other hand, will probably only spend 1 to 1.5 percent of their GDP on defense tasks, while the Western European non-aligned countries will spend 0.5 to 1 percent. As neither the conflict with Russia nor other geostrategic developments are perceived as a relevant threat to defense policy in Austria, the long-term trend will also be maintained here. Austria has successively reduced its military expenditure as a percentage of GDP by around 30% since 2000, even more significantly than Europe as a whole (minus 20%). In 2014 and 2015, it also reduced its defense budget by 6 to 6.5 percent in relation to GDP. In 2015, it will therefore spend less than 50 percent of what Europe spends on its defense. Measured according to NATO standards, Austrian military expenditure amounts to 2.3 billion euros (0.69% of GDP). Due to the real increase in personnel and operating costs as a result of inflation, there will therefore be an extreme reduction in investment.
