US never paid for European Defense

I was recently writing about how a nation could spend their wealth. I was remarking on the contrast of places like Dubai where they will build the tallest skyscrapers, the police drive Bugatti’s and compared with my own native Norway that lacks most of these very visible displays of opulence despite being a very rich country.

I was remarking on how in Norway money has gone to public transport, great schools, childcare and even humane prisons. These things cost money but are not things you see when you visit a country. A tourist will not see when they enter Norway that the average pre-school has a very high quality or that prisoners are in humane prisons.

I thought it was particularly pertinent to highlight in a time when Donald Trump cuts health care for the most vulnerable in America, US aid to the poorest children in the world all while the decorates the inside of the white house with tacky gold ornamentation and erects Gold statues of himself all over the country.

The sentiment certainly connected with a lot of Americans who responded positively and wanted priorities more in that direction for America. And I think you get that with Mayors like e.g. Zohran Mamdani.

On occasion there are of course always some US right-wingers who will take a dump as such message. But this response from a fellow left-winger Dan Fox made me think:

When we as a people shovel our treasure into a war and a nation that has healthcare for all, heavily subsidized higher education for all, when we foot the bulk of the bill to keep expansionist kleptocracies at bay in Europe while our own people sleep under bridges, eat from garbage cans, and are lacking for basic needs, when it is clear we traded basic humanity for the comfort of the wealthy, then it is also abundantly clear we should follow Norway’s lead, and tax our billionaires back into nine figures.

We should demand our European friends foot the bill for their common defense against threats from the east. We should use our might to demand our wealthy allies to sacrifice their people’s treasure in kind. We should. We just don't. We used to be the the good guys.

— Dan Fox

I was surprised to find someone who had no love of Trump at all buy into the typical US right-wing rhetoric that the US somehow cannot take care of its own because it is busy paying for the defense of Europe.

What is going on here? I think what is going on is that both US left-wing and right-wing media has an interest in perpetuating this myth. For the US right it is about pushing the narrative about how the US is the most awesome country in the world and us Europeans are just ungrateful leeches.

For the US left however, I think it is about trying to sell a positive message: The US is helping its allies. The US military is good. No voter on the left would respond well to “let us keep bases all over the world to retain American power and dominance.” It sounds much better if instead on says “let us build bases around the world to protect our allies.”

And at some level that is of course true. The US obviously benefits its allies. The problem with the narrative is that US media never talk about what the US actually gets back. Thus it comes across as if the US is running some big charity project in Europe.

America is not merely helping allies. It is also maintaining an Empire. Of course that would not sound great to voters, so it is rephrased entirely as a if it was charity. But there is no deny it is also part of maintaining a global US Empire.

Take US bases in Europe. Those are not charity towards Europe. We cover a lot of expenses that means US military expenses to keep that large force is reduced.

Those bases are massive stockpiles or ammo, spare parts, fuel etc which is what allows the US to conduct missions in the Middle East. None of many US invasions in the Middle East would have been possible without those European bases. Shipping fuel, ammo etc all the way from the US during such an operation would be too costly and take too long time.

And Europe has no interest in invading the middle East. It doesn’t serve us. So in this regard our bases when it comes to actual usage has primarily served US interests.

Proof that this is not about our interest is that we have strongly opposed US bases in Norway for decades. Yet, the US has kept pushing and pushing for it.

If these bases were truly for our benefit and some kind of charity, then why on Earth would the US have to keep pressuring us to get them? That makes no sense. We would have been begging to get those bases. We never did. It was the US that pushed it.

But do Americans ever get told such perspectives in their media? Of course not. Americans get the glossy postcard version.

Here is another example that undercuts the idea that the US served us. Finland and Norway have spend roughly the same on defense over the years. Finland has been outside of NATO and always built their defense on the assumption that they would stand alone in war. Because that is what happened during the Winter war.

Norway has a been a NATO member. If the US truly subsidized our defense, then our spending should have been significantly less than Finland. It wasn’t.

And here is the kicker: Finland has a much larger and stronger defense than us. How can that be, if we spent about the same?

Because they have spend mainly on their actual defense while Norway has spent far more resources on being able to joint US led NATO mission abroad. Basically our spending has been on weapons that allow us to assist the US in their missions. That has pulled substantial resources away from our home defense.

We rationalized that on the ground that we thought that was a smart investment: Help the US, and then get help back when we need it. It turns out that has been a total waste, because Trump is stabbing us in the back.

We have sacrificed our own defense for the US and now we are kind of screwed. We bought the far more expensive F-35 planes than Swedish Gripen, despite Gripen being much better suited for our needs. And that process that led to F-35 involved massive US pressure from behind closed door. It was never a fair competition.

Now we sit with massively expensive planes, extremely reliant on the US.

So contrary to what Americans seem to believe, as we in Europe are trying to build more independence from the US in our defense that is not going to save you any money. Quite the contrary, it is going to cost you money. Because now we will shift spending to European military equipment.

And spending on equipment to be able to join US missions abroad will likely get down prioritized as we increasingly see the US as an unreliable ally. Instead we will focus on domestic defense needs.