[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 115 (Tuesday, July 10, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Page S4878]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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   SENATE RESOLUTION 570--EMPHASIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF MEETING NATO 
                          SPENDING COMMITMENTS

  Mr. PERDUE (for himself, Mr. Lankford, Mr. Cotton, Mr. Inhofe, and 
Mr. Lee) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the 
Committee on Foreign Relations:

                              S. Res. 570

       Whereas, for over six decades, the North Atlantic Treaty 
     Organization (NATO) has been a successful intergovernmental 
     political and military alliance;
       Whereas NATO's collective defense serves as a deterrent 
     against aggression from adversaries and external security 
     threats;
       Whereas NATO strengthens the security of the United States 
     by utilizing an integrated military coalition;
       Whereas Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that 
     ``in order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this 
     Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of 
     continuous and effective self-help and mutual aid, will 
     maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity 
     to resist armed attack'';
       Whereas, since the formation of NATO, the United States has 
     negotiated with NATO allies over fair and equitable burden 
     sharing;
       Whereas, in 1953, President Dwight Eisenhower invited 
     European NATO allies to increase their contribution in 
     defense spending, pointing out that the ``American well had 
     run dry'';
       Whereas, at a 1963 National Security Council meeting, 
     President John F. Kennedy stated that ``we cannot continue to 
     pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO 
     states are not paying their fair share and living off the fat 
     of the land'';
       Whereas President Richard Nixon's Second Annual Report to 
     the Congress on United States Foreign Policy stated, ``The 
     emphasis is no longer on their sharing the cost of America's 
     military commitment to Europe--although financial 
     arrangements may play a part--but on their providing the 
     national forces needed in conjunction with ours in support of 
     an effective common strategy.'';
       Whereas the first NATO defense-spending target was issued 
     in the 1977 NATO Ministerial Guidance, where NATO allies 
     agreed to increase defense spending by 3 percent annually to 
     address the substantially larger defense resource allocations 
     of the Soviet Union;
       Whereas, during the 1980s, the United States drastically 
     increased its defense spending to combat threats posed by the 
     Soviet Union, causing its share of total NATO defense 
     spending to rise dramatically, while at the same time, NATO 
     allies failed to meet the 1977 spending target;
       Whereas the National Defense Authorization Act, 1985 
     (Public Law 98-525) included a sense of Congress that the 
     President should ``call on the pertinent members of the North 
     Atlantic Treaty Organization to meet or exceed their pledges 
     for an annual increase in defense spending'';
       Whereas, in the 1988 NATO Summit Declaration, NATO allies 
     reaffirmed their ``willingness to share fairly the risks, 
     burdens and responsibilities as well as the benefits of our 
     common efforts'';
       Whereas, in 1990, as the Soviet Union was trending towards 
     collapse, NATO defense ministers agreed to drop the 3-percent 
     annual increase policy, as allies looked to ``reap the 
     benefits of the greatly improved climate in East-West 
     relations'';
       Whereas, while defense spending among all NATO allies 
     decreased throughout the 1990s, conflicts in Bosnia, and 
     later in Kosovo, clearly illustrated that European NATO 
     allies severely lacked key military capabilities, causing 
     British Prime Minister Tony Blair to state, ``If Europe wants 
     the United States to maintain its commitment to Europe, 
     Europe must share more of the burden of defending the West's 
     security interests.'';
       Whereas, at the 2002 NATO Prague Summit, NATO allies 
     entered into a nonbinding agreement to raise defense spending 
     to 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) in order 
     to meet the goals set out in the Prague Capabilities 
     Commitment;
       Whereas, before the 2006 NATO Riga Summit, United States 
     Ambassador to NATO Victoria Nuland called the 2-percent 
     metric the ``unofficial floor'' on defense spending in NATO;
       Whereas, at the 2006 NATO Riga Summit, NATO allies declared 
     that ``we encourage nations whose defense spending is 
     declining to halt that decline and to aim to increase defense 
     spending in real terms'';
       Whereas, at the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit, NATO allies 
     reaffirmed their defense-spending goal;
       Whereas, in 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said, 
     ``The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite 
     and patience in the U.S. Congress--and in the American body 
     politic writ large--to expend increasingly precious funds on 
     behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the 
     necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be 
     serious and capable partners in their own defense.'';
       Whereas, in 2014 at the NATO Wales Summit, NATO members 
     officially declared to increase their defense spending to 2 
     percent of their gross domestic product by 2024;
       Whereas the Wales Summit Declaration stated that ``[a]llies 
     currently meeting the NATO guideline to spend a minimum of 2% 
     of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense will aim to 
     continue to do so'' and continued, ``Allies whose current 
     proportion of GDP spent on defense is below this level will: 
     halt any decline in defense expenditure; aim to increase 
     defense expenditure in real terms as GDP grows; aim to move 
     towards the 2% guideline within a decade with a view to 
     meeting their NATO Capability Targets and filling NATO's 
     capability shortfalls.'';
       Whereas, for the first time since 1990, there have been 
     three consecutive years of increases in NATO defense 
     spending;
       Whereas, since the end of 2014, defense expenditures by 
     NATO Europe and Canada have risen by $28,000,000,000, 
     representing a 10-percent increase;
       Whereas, in 2014, only three NATO allies met the 2-percent 
     spending target, while NATO expects eight allies to meet the 
     target in 2018, and 15 allies to reach the target by 2024;
       Whereas, while the 2-percent defense-spending target is an 
     important measure of allies' commitment to NATO, it is 
     imperative that defense expenditures are both interoperable 
     with, and strengthen, NATO's critical military capabilities;
       Whereas Russia fundamentally challenges the peaceful world 
     order that NATO has sought to foster and aspires to extend as 
     it continues its illegal occupation of territory in Ukraine, 
     Moldova, and Georgia; and
       Whereas strengthening NATO's capabilities is critical to 
     the future of the alliance to deter an increasingly 
     aggressive Russia to NATO's east, the threat posed by ISIS, 
     and instability to NATO's south, as well as emerging security 
     challenges, including terrorism and cybersecurity: Now, 
     therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the Senate--
       (1) reaffirms the commitment of the United States to the 
     North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as the foundation 
     of transatlantic security and defense;
       (2) encourages all member countries of the North Atlantic 
     Treaty Organization to fulfill their commitments to levels 
     and composition of defense expenditures as agreed upon at the 
     NATO 2014 Wales Summit;
       (3) calls on NATO allies to finance, equip, and train their 
     armed forces to achieve interoperability and fulfill their 
     national and regional security interests; and
       (4) recognizes NATO allies who meet their defense spending 
     commitments or are otherwise providing adequately for their 
     national and regional security interests.

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