Very interesting for the contents and for the analysis made, the article of General Pasquale Preziosa, former Chief of Staff of the Air Force until 2016, published by Formiche.net.
(by Pasquale Preziosa) In an article by Nikkei Asian Review (Hiroyuki Akita) Concerns of Japan and South Korea about the insistent requests of the President appeared on 4 February Donald Trump to take charge of the total expenses incurred by the USA for the defense of their countries, not only for the stationing of the troops, but also for the maintenance of the nuclear umbrella.
The two states are already paying high contributions to the US, 75-80% of the expenses incurred by Japan, and 40% of South Korea. Tokyo in 2019 has already repaid $ 4 billion in Washington and believes that an additional the increase in reimbursements, which could also include the salaries of US personnel, could be perceived by the country as a defense service done by mercenaries, instead of between allies, or a privatization of the defense sector similar to the services offered by the Blackwater company of Erik prince. In addition, the additional American request to pay also for the nuclear protective umbrella leaves the two countries perplexed.
The United States, for its part, says that maintaining a system of monitoring and readiness of forces to exercise nuclear deterrence is expensive for American citizens.
All US requests are also pushing Korean public opinion towards the idea that Seoul should have its own nuclear arsenal (Gallup Korea survey: 60% of the population). The US is now perceived, both in Japan and in South Korea, as "squeezers" of the financial resources of allied countries. In Europe, no survey has yet been conducted on the perception of US requests made to countries belonging to NATO. The latter could be a harbinger of potential risks to alliances and global security: many countries could be encouraged to rethink their relationship with Washington.
Furthermore, a hypothetical cost sharing should also correspond to a sharing of knowledge on nuclear capabilities and command and control systems. This appears at present to be very remote, indeed impossible because of problems related to US national security. In other words, it is right that the costs of deterrence do not all fall on the United States, but it is also true that the industries of individual countries must also participate in the updates of military technological capabilities, with the sharing of command and control systems by of allies.
Upstream, however, there would be another major problem still unresolved, namely how to divide the levels of deterrence for the United States and those dedicated to allied countries. If the United States' allies equip themselves with nuclear weapons, the non-proliferation regime would be doomed at sunset, just when any deterrent effort is being made to stem the aspirations of North Korea and Iran.
The problem of US requests will be kept in limbo until next November and will recur with more insistence after the next presidential elections, not only for the two Asian countries, but also for NATO where the request for 2% of the single country's GDP is in force. for defense expenses, with ambiguous and unclear responses from some European countries. The commodification of alliances can lead to the outsourcing of the second war Michael Sandel ("Everything also sells honor," interview with Corriere della Sera a Massimo Gagi), "Alters the mechanisms of democratic decision-making, corrupts civism and the principle of political responsibility".
The French president Emmanuel Macron a few days after Trump's visit to Asia, perhaps in the wake of what happened, he said that he would like Europe to be "nuclear power" and that Europeans will no longer be spectators in a new arms race that will also affect the territory EU.
The INF treaty has already been skipped and the diplomatic premises for its possible and appropriate extension are not felt for the agreement called "new Start" which will end its effects on February 5th. With its lapse, global security would be very much at risk. President Macron warns of the possibility of a new military and nuclear competition similar to that already experienced in the XNUMXs and proposes his nuclear power, albeit modest, at the service of Europe, within a framework of construction of the European defense pillar, in synergy with the United States. The initiative has the advantage of being able to free Europe from the quarrels with the US of who pays and for what, but clashes with the not yet dormant mistrust between European countries, enemy of the mutual trust now necessary to build a federal European sovereignty and shared.
The new race to nuclear rearmament will be facilitated by the achievement of new hypersonic technological capacities by China and Russia, which has made the entire US anti-missile system insufficient, effectively depleting the American deterrence system based on the anti-missile system and conventional forces. . In 2004, the United States made a choice of field, which has now proved to be not very far-sighted, under financing technological research on hypersonic in favor of space research. Unfortunately, the French offer will not be, at present, of weight to rebalance the global security, because the three hundred nuclear warheads available are lacking in the new technological capacity linked to hypersonic.
Conversely, however, the initiative could open up the possibility of being able to share the development, on a European scale, of the new hypersonic capacities with the establishment of the initial industrial base of European defense which can only be developed on new technological products. Moreover, there are no positive financial margins for individual European countries to be able to finance large technological projects on a national scale, for the necessary and urgent adjustments required by the strategic framework.
The financial leverage, for the new European military planning in synergy with NATO, is in the hands of the European Union, which would thus also strengthen transatlantic relations. The alternative for Europe is to continue on the already known road of strategic irrelevance, making the necessary (European) contribution to global security lack. European action in the field of defense would help individual countries to recover political energy by avoiding the current slow but inexorable chalking of ideas and political principles of old Europe, linked by external and internal quarrelsome, however, without planning and economy of scale for the future of their nations. In the absence of important decisions by the European Union, let's prepare ourselves for exhausting and inconclusive strategic debates starting from the next November elections in America, possibly in cooperation with Japan and South Korea, to face the new sharing requests of the United States. .