The Chinese term "paper tiger" means something that seems strong but is actually weak.
I was reminded of it when I read about the comparative analysis of NATO and Russian military capabilities done by the Polish network TVN24.
On paper, NATO compared to Russia is like an elephant to a pug. Take, for example, military budgets: the alliance spends $950 bn a year, while Russia spends less than $90 bn.
Or the overall numerical strength of the armed forces: 3.5 mln NATO personnel to Russia's 766,000. The North Atlantic alliance looks superior to Russia on all counts. But is this really the case? After all, on paper, as of February 2014, Ukraine's army was the sixth largest in the world in manpower and equipment.
And yet it was routed by the Donetsk self-defense forces, commanded by musicians, blue collar workers and even a historical reenactment fan.
But if you take all the key indicators of NATO armies and list them in a chart, the picture will look somewhat different. At first glance, looks fine. There are 28 countries in the bloc with a total population of 888 mln people. They have 3.9 mln troops between them, over 6,000 warplanes, around 3,600 helicopters, 17,800 tanks, 62,600 armored fighting vehicles, 15,000 artillery pieces, 16,000 mortars, 2,600 multiple launch systems and 302 warships (all major classes, including submarines). The trick, however, is that it includes more than just NATO. There's some deceptive accounting.
Take France, for example. Its armed forces are often added to the total, despite the fact that the country pulled out of the NATO military structure a long time ago, and even in the best-case scenario, would only rent out a couple of skeletal corps.
That immediately reduces the total figures by 64 mln people, 654,000 personnel, 637 tanks, 6,400 armored fighting vehicles, and so on. It doesn't seem like much.
Even without the 600 French guns, NATO still has 14,000. But that's only true if you ignore the fact that most of these weapons are mothballed and located at storage facilities. Ukraine had over 2,500 tanks of various types. But when it came time for war, it turned out that around 600 were combat ready and as many could be activated within a relatively short time span. The remaining tanks were useless.
I hope that Germany (858 main battle tanks and 2,002 armored fighting vehicles) and Spain (456 tanks and 1,102 AFVs) take better care of their equipment in storage, but even that wouldn't change much.
Taken all together, the figures are striking. On paper, NATO has 55,600 (62,000 minus France's 6,400) AFVs of various types, including 25,300 US vehicles, a full 20,000 of which are in long-term storage. Next, it turns out that the largest number of AFV "reserves" – 11,500 – is concentrated in countries that have armies of fewer than 100,000 servicemen. For example, Bulgaria has a force of 34,970 and it has inherited 362 tanks and 1,596 AFVs from the Warsaw Pact. So, practically all of them are in storage.
The situation in the Czech Republic is basically the same. On paper, it has an army of 17,930, with 175 tanks and 1,013 AFVs. In short, even without going into the intricacies of logistics, spare part supplies and the obvious difficulties of having UK reservists operate Soviet-made T-72 tanks, it turns out that practically all the figures on armored vehicles and artillery systems can be easily divided by four.
This leaves 4,450 of the 17,800 tanks, but only a half of them are actually operational. The second half is still in storage under a thick layer of grease, which takes a while to remove. For some sense of just how long, it took Ukraine four months to deploy its army, and that was practically under ideal conditions without any interference.
Ukraine has reminded us of another important lesson. An army is more than just the sum of its personnel, rifles, tanks and armored vehicles. The army, above all, is about structure. And yet not all the national armed forces of its member countries are structurally part of NATO, but only about one-third of them. And then this one-third is also divided in three very different categories. Around 15 percent of formations (i.e. 15 percent of the 30 percent of the national armies that are "attached to the alliance") are the so-called rapid deployment forces. They are maintained at 75-85 percent of their wartime staffing levels and are prepared to perform a combat mission within seven days of an order being issued. Another 25 percent are maintained in a state of "operational readiness" (60 percent of wartime manpower level) and can be deployed in three or four months. The remaining 60 percent of the units require no less than 365 days to be put on alert. All other army subunits of the member countries are maintained at staffing levels stipulated under their national defense programs. Given the constant reduction of military budgets, many of them are maintained at reduced-strength levels.
This primarily applies to East European states. If 1.5 mln Americans and 350,000 French are subtracted from the 3.6 mln active soldiers, this leaves 1.75 mln, of which Germany, the UK and Italy account for just 654,300. The Greek and Spanish armies (156,600 and 128,200 soldiers, respectively) can be easily left out of the equation. There are also big question marks about Turkey's army (510,000).
In light of the recent gas and military agreements, Istanbul is hardly eager to demonstrate its Euro-Atlantic unity. So it turns out that apart from 100,000 "Polish bayonets," the other 500,000 soldiers are provided by 19 states with armies ranging from 73,000 men (Romania) to 4,700 (Estonia). And let's not forget the Armed Forces of Luxembourg: 900 men!
It turns out that "old" NATO, as represented by the first 12 member states, is overdoing the self-promotion. At one time, the facts and figures in NATO pamphlets really reflected reality. In 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bundeswehr alone had 7,000 tanks, 8,900 armored vehicles, and 4,600 guns. Plus 9,500 US tanks and 5,700 US AFVs and armored personnel carriers, 2,600 artillery systems and 300 warplanes. Today, there is no longer any of that on German soil.
In 2016, the last British soldier will go home. Only two skeletal brigades without manpower and equipment, and less than 100 aircraft of the US forces remain there.
Meanwhile, the Bundeswehr itself has shrunk to 185,500 men. This is two and a half times fewer soldiers than the Turkish army, 5.2 times fewer AFVs and 2.2 times fewer tanks. There are more tanks and armored vehicles in storage in Poland than in Germany! The Poles have 946 tanks and 2,610 AFVs, compared to the Germans' 858 and 2,002, respectively.
Ironically, all of the East European and Baltic states sought to join NATO primarily in order to get under the defense umbrella of the US, Germany, the UK and Italy and escape the onerous burden of military spending. A paradoxical situation had evolved by the start of the 21st century. The alliance includes over two dozen countries but its defense capability continues to hinge on the dreams of Germany's military superiority on land and Britain's superiority at sea. For example, the ever more aggressive rhetoric and behavior of the leaders of some Baltic states is still based on the confidence that should something happen, all 800 German Leopards will rush to the defense of, say, Vilnius.
Drastic changes have taken place in NATO over the past 15 years. Brussels basically admits it in so many words: the bloc's available resources will be enough for only two categories of missions: limited participation in a humanitarian operation (i.e. without military action) and operations to enforce an embargo – and in the second case, only with regard to a small and weak country, not Russia. Even such missions as the evacuation of civilians, support for a counterterrorist operation and shows of force are no longer possible, both due to the limited capabilities of their own forces and the unacceptably heavy losses. As for "crisis management" and "direct intervention" missions, they are beyond the bloc's capability.
Yes, in the past decade, NATO has been involved in a large number of military operations. Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East. But in reality, only US forces have fought everywhere. NATO forces were only "present" there. The trick was that Germany and the UK did of course send small contingents to Afghanistan but they basically farmed those wars out to Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Czechs, Poles and other "partners": a platoon here, a company or a battalion there, and that was enough manpower to perform combat missions instead of the Germans and Britons.
This also answers the question that increasingly irks the Ukrainians. Why did the US and NATO promise them so many nice things last winter but Ukraine is still fighting all on its own? It's simple. Because NATO exists on paper, not in reality. Can the former military power be restored? It certainly can, but only by lowering European living standards by 20-25 percent.
Defense comes at a price. It does not produce anything but consumes a lot, both directly, in the form of budget spending on maintenance and upkeep, and indirectly, by diverting people from working in the private sector where people are tax payers instead of "tax consumers." EU countries are not thrilled at this prospect. NATO's newly admitted members wanted to join the alliance precisely in order not to pay for their own armies and to have somebody else's army protect them – German or Portuguese. But then the Portuguese are not keen to give up their bread and butter to defend some Baltic states, which few Europeans can even point out on a map.
It's time for the Baltic states and Ukraine, among others, to face this reality. NATO is a paper tiger preoccupied with its own internal problems. Everything else is just for grandstanding in front of the TV cameras.