US General: NATO operations hampered by low European defence spending

The head of the US European command today said inadequate defence budgets of Western European countries continue to hamper Nato’s operations.

The United States has been warning for years that the gap between US and European defence spending threatens the ability of countries to operate together because of disparities in infrastructure.

“The defence budgets of many of these Nato nations have fallen to a level that jeopardises their ability to make long-term strategic military commitments to meet the alliance’s 21st century ambitions,” Gen John Craddock, supreme commander of Nato operations, told the Armed Services Committee of the House of Representatives.

Craddock said that new Nato members in Eastern Europe are straining to keep up with the spending demands of integration despite great enthusiasm for the alliance.

The worries were reinforced by the committee’s chairman, Democrat Ike Skelton, who warned that European defence spending and insistence on limiting their troops’ roles in Nato missions, especially in Afghanistan, threatened to hamstring Nato.