UKIP Campaign Advert - The European Army

CW5 Andrew J. Foreman from my time at EUCOM, it seemed that NATO countries had a hard time fielding teams for missions without the US proving equipment etc. I really cannot see them standing up and funding an army. We may be surprised.

LTC Frank D. I read more articles on this topic and Germany really wants to see this happen. As we all know, NATO nations train and fight under Joint Commands already but it seems Germany is pushing for them to have day-to-day operational control of other nation's units. However, you bring up funding and here is where the UK is critical. The US has the lion share of the NATO budget ($649 Billion of the $871 Billion budget). Basically we subsidize EU nations military budgets. The NATO standard is 2% of GDP on defense and the median spent is 1.1% with only 4 nations between2-2.5% and the US reaching nearly 4%. In order to make this happen Germany and the UK must take on the bulk of any EU defense budget, which will increase their defense expenditures well beyond 4% GDP. So if they are paying that much I can see how they, the Germans, would want to be in control of the force.