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cial programs, squeezing out what little budget space
remained for defense spending. Compounding these
problems for allies who joined the fight in either Iraq
or Afghanistan, or both, was the reality that those campaigns
were prolonged, “boots-on-the-ground” intensive,
and required equipment and platforms unique to
those fights. Toss in economies hard hit by the “great
recession” of 2008 and the lackluster recoveries that
followed, and one has a recipe for an even further
decline in the hard power capabilities of key allies.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies’
continued effort to try to “do more with less” has resulted
in a decade-long series of complaints from senior
U.S. officials that too many of our allies have not
kept to the 2002 agreed-upon benchmark of spending
a minimum of 2 percent of their gross domestic product
(GDP) on defense. Nor is this a problem confined
to NATO and Europe. Key Asian security partners—
South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and Australia—fall
below the 2 percent line, as well.
As justified as those complaints are and as useful
as it is for generally measuring a country’s defense
burden, focusing on military spending as a percentage
of GDP is insufficient for fully understanding
each country’s military-strategic plans, capacities, and
outlook. The chapters which follow, commissioned
over the past few years by the Marilyn Ware Center
for Security Studies at the American Enterprise Institute,
Washington, DC, are intended to fill in that gap.
The chapters, written by country and security experts,
examine current and planned defense budgets, troop
strengths, deployable capabilities, procurement programs,
research and development efforts, doctrinal
updates, and strategic guidance documents in an ef-
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