On the NATOVET Radar Weekly (09-15 December 2022)

Focus Point: Defence Budgets- Si vis pacem, para bellum!

European defence spending surpasses €200 billion for first time?by?eda.europa.eu

08.12.2022?The European Defence Agency (EDA) has today published its annual Defence Data report for 2020-2021, detailing defence spending by the 26 EDA Member States. In 2021, total European defence spending stood at a new high of?€214 billion, marking a further 6% increase on 2020 and the seventh year of consecutive growth. EDA’s report finds that Member States are investing more than ever on the procurement of defence equipment and research and development with a 16% rise compared to 2020, totalling a record €52 billion.

RECORD EUROPEAN DEFENCE EXPENDITURE?& INVESTMENT

At €214 billion, total defence expenditure corresponds to 1.5% of the 26 EDA Member States’ gross domestic product (GDP), the same as recorded in 2020. The 6% rise in spending compared to 2020, marks the strongest yearly growth rate since the rebound started in 2015 following the financial crisis. Compared to the historic low reached in 2014, defence expenditure has increased by almost €52 billion, or 32% in real terms.?eda.europa.eu

U.S. House overwhelmingly approves bill backing record military spending?by?Reuters

08.12.2022?The U.S. House of Representatives backed legislation on Thursday paving the way for the defense budget to hit a record?$858 billion?next year, $45 billion more than proposed by President Joe Biden.

The House passed the compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, an annual must-pass bill setting policy for the Pentagon, by 350-80, far exceeding the two-thirds majority required to pass the legislation and send it for a vote in the Senate.

The fiscal 2023 NDAA authorizes $858 billion in military spending and includes a 4.6% pay increase for the troops, funding for purchases of weapons, ships and aircraft; and support for Taiwan as it faces aggression from China and Ukraine as it fights an invasion by Russia. It provides Ukraine at least $800 million in additional security assistance next year and includes a range of provisions to strengthen Taiwan amid tensions with China.?Reuters

Focus Point: The Great Power Competition

Stoltenberg warns business world on China?by?euractiv

09.12.2022?NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s??comment on Chine from the annual conference Norway’s Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO, N?ringslivets Hovedorganisasjon) in Oslo on??January 5,2022.

“Free trade cannot trump freedom, and commercial considerations cannot trump considerations for our country's security,” Stoltenberg told VG on Thursday, adding that the war in Ukraine highlighted Europe’s vulnerability in that regard.

Norwegian and world business should not make themselves vulnerable by becoming too dependent on trade with China, warned NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday, referencing Europe’s “mistake” of relying heavily on Russian gas.

Stoltenberg, who is also the former Norwegian prime minister, has been invited to Norway’s Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO, N?ringslivets Hovedorganisasjon), a major annual conference in Oslo on 5 January, where he will discuss how to trade with authoritarian countries can threaten the security of countries and companies.

“We must not repeat that mistake towards China,” he said, warning against “dependence on goods such as rare minerals, or that they are allowed to control infrastructure such as the 5G network, or that we share technology that undermines our own security.”

Stoltenberg, however, insisted that he did not want to isolate China economically, but instead called for more “overall considerations when you engage economically with authoritarian countries such as China and Russia,” adding that not doing business with China would be “wrong”.?euractiv

Focus Point: The Western Balkans

EU, NATO condemn attacks on police in north Kosovo as tensions soar?by?euractiv

11.12.2022?The EU and NATO condemned renewed tensions in northern Kosovo on Sunday (11 December) after unknown attackers exchanged gunfire with the police and threw a stun grenade at the EU’s law enforcers during the night.

Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs, outraged over the arrest of a former police officer, gathered again early in the morning at the roadblocks erected on Saturday, which paralyse traffic on two border crossings from Kosovo towards Serbia.

Kosovo, populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade does not recognise it and has consistently encouraged the Serb majority in northern Kosovo to defy Pristina’s authority.

Hours after the barricades went up, police said they had suffered three successive firearm attacks on Saturday night on one of the roads leading to the border.

“The police units, in self-defence, were forced to respond with firearms to the criminal persons and groups, who were repelled and left in an unknown direction,” the Kosovo police said in a statement.

EU police deployed in the region as part of the rule of law mission, EULEX, said they were also targeted with a stun grenade but no officers were injured.

“This attack, as well as the attacks on Kosovo police officers, are unacceptable,” EULEX said in a statement.

“[The] EU will not tolerate attacks on @EULEXKosovo or use of violent, criminal acts in the north. Barricades must be removed immediately by groups of Kosovo Serbs. Calm must be restored,” the bloc’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said on Sunday.?euractiv

Russia-Ukraine War: The Crime of Aggression

Approaching RUS-UKR War as a Crime of Aggression?by?NATO Veterans Initiative

12.12.2022???“Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, announced on November 30, 2022, an EU proposal to set up a court, backed by the United Nations, to investigate and prosecute Putin for the crime of aggression. However, it’s far from certain that senior Russian leaders will be brought to justice under international law.”?Source: How War Crimes and the Crime of Aggression Are Being Pursued Against Russia - Bloomberg

?“Except in the case of UN Security Council referrals, non-ICC member states are excluded from the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression, regardless of victim or aggressor status. The crime of aggression against Ukraine cannot be considered by the court, since neither Ukraine nor Russia has ratified either the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court or special amendments to it.”?Source: Crime of Aggression | Coalition for the International Criminal Court (coalitionfortheicc.org)

NATOVET Focus Question:

Considering all, the larger question remains: Although with good intentions, does this have the potential to push a neurotic dictator to the very edge and cause him to over-react and trigger a dooms day scenario? Time will tell…?NATO Veterans Initiative

Focus Point:?Qatargate

The Brief — EU democracy’s rotten fruits?by euractiv

12.12. 2022?There is no doubt that the European Parliament has a laissez-faire attitude toward family businesses built around MEPs. For example, there is no safeguard against a family member setting up an NGO or an association which would raise funds from an interested party in exchange for lobbying services by the respective MEP.

In any case, if an offence were committed, it would hardly stand in court without a smoking gun. As we have seen, money changes hands in bags, not via bank transfers, and there is no paper trail.

The European Parliament now has the daunting task of guaranteeing that Qatargate remains the exception and not the rule according to which MEPs work.

But let us not forget that this is not the first time MEPs have been bought by states with less-than-stellar reputations. The Azerbaijan Laundromat saw EU politicians from Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe paid off in return for glowing reports.

Enforcing safeguards is necessary to make it much more difficult for corruptors, be they from the Gulf states, Central Asia, Russia, China, or big corporations, to buy the MEPs we have voted for. I have personally voted for the Belgian socialists, and now I feel betrayed.

It would have been worse had this scandal erupted ahead of the European elections. There is still time until September 2024 to transform the current crisis into an opportunity to restore confidence in the work of MEPs. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has a mammoth mission to accomplish.?euractiv

Focus Point: The Western Balkans

North Kosovo attacks intensify, Belgrade asks NATO to send in military?by?euractiv

13.12.2022?Local elections were supposed to be held in Kosovo’s northern Serb-majority municipalities on 18 December. The election in Northern Mitrovica, Zubin Potok, Zvecan and Leposavic was due after ethnic Serb representatives left their posts in November to protest a Kosovo government decided to require all Kosovo citizens to have nationally issued license plates. This would impact some 10,000 ethnic Serbs who still use plates from the former Yugoslavia and refuse to recognise Kosovo’s independence.

President Vjosa Osmani announced that due to the rising tensions, they would be postponed until April 2023.

“We discussed about the most suitable date and suitable time, and in the end, with full consensus, after my proposal, we came to the conclusion that it should be postponed to April 2023,” she said.

Serbian President Aleksander Vucic annouced he would request permission from KFOR, the NATO-led international peacekeeping force, to send the Serbian army and police into Kosovo.?

“We agreed today on the text to send a request to the commander of KFOR, by Resolution 1244, to ensure the deployment of members of the Serbian army and police in the territory of Kosovo, and the government’s decision on this matter will it is taken on Monday or Tuesday”, he said.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 states that “after the withdrawal, an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serb military and police personnel will be permitted to return to Kosovo” to perform some functions.” These include liaising with the international civil and security presence, clearing minefields, having a presence at Serb patrimonial sites and critical border crossings.”?

Sources within the Kosovo government told EURACTIV that Belgrade’s interpretation of Resolution 1244 does not allow the return of military during periods of unrest and is, therefore, untenable.?euractiv

?Focus Point: Migration

Amnesty International says Spain, Morocco used ‘unlawful force’ in Melilla incident?byeuractive

14.12.2022??Moroccan and Spanish security forces used “unlawful force” and failed to provide sufficient medical assistance after migrants stormed the border fence between Morocco and Spain’s north-African enclave of Melilla in June, according to an Amnesty International?report?published Tuesday.

The report, like others before it, contests the official version of events, saying that at least 37 sub-Saharan Africans, rather than the officially reported 23, died that day?– though the number could be even far higher and amount to 77.

On those who were wounded in the incident, the report also points to the many more who were wounded, compared to official reports, and that authorities did not provide enough medical assistance to the wounded.

At the press conference,?Esteban Beltrán, the director of Amnesty International-Spain, also criticised the Spanish government as it “seems to have tried to cover up the facts”.?It has not yet initiated an own-initiative inquiry, collaborates “reluctantly” with the Public Prosecutor’s Office,?“has exonerated” the security forces, and lied, he added.

The?report?also denounces the “widespread use of unlawful force by Moroccan and Spanish security forces”, even after migrants were in police hands. Along with this “unlawful” use of force, neither the Moroccan nor the Spanish police guaranteed emergency medical attention to the wounded, who were left “in the sun for eight hours without being given basic first aid”, the organisation added.?euractive

Focus Point: NATO- A must read

Change and Continuity- December 2003??by Lord Robertson?released by?NATO

14.12.2022?The answer is that NATO will succeed because it has no alternative.

More recently, historians told us that alliances between free nations do not survive the disappearance of the threat that brought them together. NATO disproved that argument. The Warsaw Pact disintegrated but NATO retooled. It retooled first to help spread security and stability Eastwards across Europe, then to use its unique multinational military capabilities to bring peace to Europe's bloody and chaotic Balkan backyard, and now to confront the new threats of our post-9/11 world.

How, for example, will an Alliance created to defend Cold War Europe fare beyond the Hindu Kush? The answer is that NATO will succeed because it has no alternative. All of its members understand and agree that if we do not go to Afghanistan, and succeed in Afghanistan, Afghanistan and its problems will come to us. Worse still, we would have to deal with the terrorists, the refugees and the drug traffickers with a much weaker international security structure because NATO would have been severely damaged and the concept of multinational security cooperation, whether in NATO, the European Union, the United Nations or coalitions, would have been dealt an equally heavy blow.

?I saw what the terrorists could do in the rubble of the Twin Towers and then how NATO could retool to help defeat them. I saw Alliance troops bringing hope to the streets of Kabul, a continent and a half away from the old Iron Curtain. Most of all, I have seen a transformed Alliance doing what it has done best since 1949: delivering safety and security where it matters and when it matters. This is a simple message that everyone should understand and welcome.?NATO

Focus Point: Defence Budgets- Si vis pacem, para bellum!

NATO agrees 2023 budgets, reflecting higher ambitions for the new security reality?by?NATO

14.12.2022?Allies agreed NATO’s civil and military budgets for 2023 at a meeting of the North Atlantic Council on Wednesday (14 December 2022). The civil budget is set at €370.8 million, and the military budget is set at €1.96 billion, representing a 27.8% and 25.8% increase, respectively, over 2022.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said: “I strongly welcome the agreement of NATO’s civil and military budgets for 2023. This is a concrete expression of the higher level of ambition set by Allied Heads of State and Government at our transformative Madrid Summit in June. We must continue to invest more and better together in NATO. Only North America and Europe, working together in a strong NATO, can keep our one billion people safe in a more dangerous world."

The civil budget provides funds for personnel, operating costs, and programme expenditures of NATO’s Headquarters and its International Staff. The military budget covers the operating costs of NATO Command Structure headquarters, missions, and operations around the world. NATO’s third principal common funded element is the NATO Security Investment Programme (NSIP), which covers major construction and command and control system investments. The 2023 ceiling for the NSIP is €1 billion, representing a 26.6% increase over 2022.?NATO

Focus Point: Russia

The Fall of Russia by??Institut Montaigne

14.12.2022?In Serheii Plokhi's pithy formulation - one that mimics Lord Ismay's famous quip about NATO - the Soviet Union?ensured to keep?"the Ukrainians in, the Poles out, and the Russians down". Today, Putin's neo-imperial project is collapsing. Not only has he failed to unify the Russian world (russki mir), but his closest neighbors, thanks to the war, now seem to want to emancipate themselves.

In the best-case scenario for him, Vladimir Putin would manage to present his very likely defeat in Ukraine as a "win". Isn't this what Khrushchev did after the Cuban crisis, or autocrats such as Saddam Hussein, the latter presenting his pitiful withdrawal from Kuwait as such? Nevertheless, he will have a hard time convincing Russian public opinion that experienced a decade of brainwashing but is not totally apathetic.?

Let us propose three (near-)certainties and four scenarios. First certainty: Russia in the mid-2020s will be a country undermined by military, economic (sanctions) and demographic weakening (more than 500,000 people have already left the country). Second certainty: the country is separating from Europe. Ukraine was the "western side" of the Russian body, balancing its "eastern side".?The third certainty is that after the war, Russia will enter a troubled period. We know the history of the country: military debacles are often followed by political upheavals, as we saw in 1905, 1917 or 1989.

As for the scenarios, the least unfavorable one would be that of Germany after 1945. After the?G?tterd?mmerung, the?Stunde Null?of which ensued shock and trauma, then followed by introspection and healing. But Russia does not have the rule of law tradition (even with interruptions) that Germany had at the time. Not to mention that it will be difficult to put it through a Nuremberg. And the country will not be placed under the protection of a benevolent protector.

More likely, then, is the North Korean scenario: the isolation and radicalization of a fortress-Russia, in which Putin or his successors would keep the country's population in a permanent state of war.?

A step further in the pessimism scale, Russia would become (for those who are most worried) a kind of Mordor ("black country"), a desolate land in which the forces of evil are preparing their revenge and reconquest of Middle Earth.

The Somalian scenario would also be that of the breakup of the Russian nation-empire. If the "vertical of power" built by Putin were destroyed, how could one imagine the maintenance of a state thirty times larger and ten times more populated??Institut Montaigne

Focus Point: The Western Balkans- A Must read

EU must seize the geopolitical moment in the Balkans?by?Politico

14.12.2022?Credible accession prospect is vital to keep Putin, China at bay in Southeastern Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has finally awakened the European Union to the strategic importance of the Western Balkans and the potential for Moscow to exploit unresolved disputes in the region to undermine the West.

EU leaders must now seize the geopolitical moment to revamp the integration of the six small, economically fragile countries with a total population of fewer than 18 million into the Union, or risk seeing them used by Russia and China in their power games.

If the EU continues to keep them at arm’s length, the alternatives could be closer alignment with Russia, the emergence of an illiberal, non-aligned zone that could stretch from Hungary to Turkey, or — worse still — a downward spiral into fresh armed conflict, involving a toxic mixture of organized crime and weaponized migration.

Moscow is trying to fan pan-Slavic Orthodox nationalism and exploit divisions wherever it can. It has lent support to Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in his threats to secede from Bosnia and has spread disinformation to amplify Kosovo Serbs’ hostility to the Pristina government.

China, for its part, has mostly pursued economic investments, using the 14+1 framework under its Belt and Road Initiative to engage with local leaders looking for ambitious infrastructure and defense projects. It follows Russia’s lead on the Western Balkans in the UN Security Council and uses its financial muscle to dissuade Balkan states from backing critical resolutions on human rights violations in Xinjiang or Hong Kong.

Serbian pro-government media relay the Russian narrative about the war in Ukraine, and Russian-owned media contribute to anti-Kosovo war hysteria. Russia and China have both contributed to Serbia’s rearmament. Moscow also has a powerful energy lever since Serbia gets 80 percent of its gas from Russia while Bosnia is 100 percent dependent. Partly as a result, Serbia has refused to align with EU sanctions against Russia, causing irritation in Brussels.

So, what should the EU do now??Politico

Focus Point:?The Great Power Competition

Understanding a New Era of Strategic Competition?by?RAND

15.12.2022?The U.S. strategic focus has increasingly turned to major-power competition, but there is currently no framework for understanding U.S. competition with near-peer rivals China and Russia. Drawing on extensive research on the economic, military, and geopolitical dimensions of U.S. strategic competition with these countries, RAND researchers assembled high-level findings and recommendations to support immediate policy decisions to ensure the U.S. competitive advantage. In the process, they developed a framework for assessing a competition between major powers in four dimensions: (1) overall context for the competition, (2) national power and competitiveness, (3) international position and influence, and (4) shape and standing of bilateral contests. This guide to understanding and succeeding in the new era of strategic competition brings together historical lessons and the latest data on global alliances, economic interdependencies, technological and military advantages, national interests, and more, highlighting broad sets of priorities for U.S. policy and investment.?RAND

Thank you very much for your reading.