The Trump administration is pushing Australia to commit to a dramatic increase in defence spending to counter China’s rise, with one of the US president’s top Pentagon picks calling for military spending to rise to at least 3% of gross domestic product.
An increase to 3% from the current 2% level, which is about NZ$62 billion, would require tens of billions of dollars in extra spending each year, straining the Commonwealth’s ability to spend on other portfolios such as health, education and welfare.
2% used to be the target for NATO countries. Now in Europe people are talking about 3% being a minimum spend, and some saying they may need to go to 5%.
Meanwhile in NZ, we spend just 1.2% of GDP on defence. This is not a sustainable position.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
3 comments:
David, if our money was used pragmatically to increase our social benefits as well as our defence capability 5% would not be too much. But, sadly, there is either no brain power being applied to such a proposition, or they thought about it and the horror was just too much to handle.
"...commit to a dramatic increase in defence spending to counter China’s rise"
This raises the obvious question, why is it imperative to counter China's rise? What will this achieve?
The US is failing fast and is no longer the unquestionable global hegemon; China is rising and, in partnership with the resource-rich Russia, is set to overtake the moribund US.
Rather than Australia spending tens of billions of taxpayer funds (buying US-made weapons, let's not forget), why not just save the time, money and effort and work to improve diplomatic relations with China?
On the other hand, backing the US's inevitably futile efforts to remain top dog is doomed to failure and will likely get a lot of people killed.
Here's a radical idea....use 100% of the money ear marked for the Paris Climate rubbish to fund our beleaguered defence forces and rebuild our defence industry to the point where we might actually be able to defend ourselves!
One thing the Chinese Navy demonstrated loud and clear a couple of weeks ago was that they can cut both Australia and ourselves off from all of our air and naval supply lines quickly and easily, as well as cutting us off from each other.
They had also simultaneously cut off Australia's Asian supply routes through the top of Australia btw.
Seriously - if that wasn't a wake up call to the people of NZ (& Australia) then we are truly doomed.
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