Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) explained on Wednesday why he would vote against Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. That accession later received the Senate’s overwhelming approval.
As Hawley put it, “So now the choice is this: We can do more in Europe … or we can do what we need to do in Asia to deter China. We cannot do both. We cannot do both. … Our European allies really must do more. They must take primary responsibility for the conventional defense of Europe and rely on U.S. forces for our nuclear deterrent and select conventional assets.”
There’s a lot of sense in that statement.
I believe Hawley should have voted in favor of Finland and Sweden’s membership in NATO. Finland has a well-funded military that should reach NATO’s 2%-of-gross domestic product defense spending target in 2023 or 2024. Importantly, Finland has a willingness-to-fight culture that would help deny Russia its strategy of dividing NATO in the event of war. And while Sweden must increase defense spending faster, its NATO membership will allow the alliance to totally surround the Baltic Sea. Sweden’s Gotland island could be turned into an anti-ship missile fortress from which to deny the Russian Baltic Fleet’s wartime movement, for example. All of this would reduce burdens on the United States and strengthen NATO, which remains a critical servant of U.S. interests.
Still, Hawley is absolutely right when he notes that the U.S. military needs to do less in Europe. It’s China, stupid.
Unfortunately, moves by President Joe Biden to transfer more of the most capable warships and fighter jets to Europe are incompatible with U.S. deterrent requirements in the Pacific. The current and evolving force scale and capability of the People’s Liberation Army demand that the U.S. reduce its current force footprint in Europe, let alone increase that footprint as Biden is doing. The suggestion, as offered by White House officials such as John Kirby, that the U.S. can effectively handle China’s threats with current U.S. force dispositions is utterly absurd. Deploying warships to Europe does not make them more ready for war with China. It increases deferred maintenance costs and time frames and depletes crew readiness via exhaustion.
China’s challenge requires an immediate and wholesale shift in U.S. military deployments. It also requires a wholesale shift in how corporate giants such as Intel and members of Congress balance issues of patriotism and cronyism. Chinese President Xi Jinping has his eyes on invading Taiwan by 2030 — and likely far sooner. Xi is already moving to make the South China Sea’s trade and energy supplies his private Communist Party swimming pool. And as Australia’s experience attests, it isn’t just U.S. allies in Europe that are under threat.
Put another way, Hawley’s arguments deserve more than the casual scorn of those who should know better.
Take Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH). When asked by Politico about Hawley’s voting stance on Finland and Sweden, the chairwoman of the Senate’s NATO Observer Group responded, “He’s irrelevant. Print that, will you?”
Shaheen apparently forgets how, back in 2015, she lauded the worse-than-useless littoral combat ships. Shaheen said constructing “a high-tech littoral combat ship is more akin to making a spacecraft than a traditional warship.”
No, senator, it is more akin to building a coral reef in waiting for the PLA.
But even as he is wrong to oppose the NATO accession of Finland and Sweden, Hawley rightly notes that too many NATO member states continue to treat the alliance like an American piggy bank. Eight years — yes, eight years — after they pledged to move toward NATO’s 2%-of-GDP defense spending target, none of the four most powerful EU economies — Germany, France, Italy, and Spain — meet it. This fact does not testify to reliable allies. France will increase spending in 2023 but nowhere near the level that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would suggest is needed for Europe’s security. Germany has pledged a major defense boost, but it’s unclear whether Berlin will actually follow through.
Some European nations, such as Belgium (which has the honor of hosting NATO headquarters) and Spain (which hosted the most recent NATO leaders summit), barely spend 1% of GDP on defense. Instead, it is the familiar allies of the United Kingdom, Poland, and the Baltic States that continue to be the lone reliable U.S. allies for NATO deterrence. (Incidentally, the most likely candidate to become Britain’s next prime minister in September has pledged further defense boosts and support for efforts to counter Chinese aggression.)
The bottom line is that China must dominate U.S. political, economic, and military strategy. Assuming that the U.S. can do everything everywhere isn’t just foolish — it’s a recipe for Chinese Communist victory in the 21st century. Finland and Sweden should be welcomed to NATO, but so also must the U.S. urgently get real about deterring China and, if necessary, defeating it in war.
