Bring European finance ministries kicking and screaming into geopolitics

TY - ICOMM

T1 - Bring European finance ministries kicking and screaming into geopolitics

AU - Breitenbauch, Henrik Ø.

PY - 2017/2/17

Y1 - 2017/2/17

N2 - The issue of burden-sharing will be a hot topic at the Munich Security Conference, a major annual event that kicks off this week. In Europe the political mechanics of defense budget hikes work differently than in the United States, where it is Congress that holds the purse strings. Across the Atlantic, it is the ministries of finance that play the central role in controlling budgets — defense and otherwise. This means that real progress on raising European defense spending will require convincing the finance ministers and their top civil servants of the new realities of European geopolitics and the direct utility of defense spending.

AB - The issue of burden-sharing will be a hot topic at the Munich Security Conference, a major annual event that kicks off this week. In Europe the political mechanics of defense budget hikes work differently than in the United States, where it is Congress that holds the purse strings. Across the Atlantic, it is the ministries of finance that play the central role in controlling budgets — defense and otherwise. This means that real progress on raising European defense spending will require convincing the finance ministers and their top civil servants of the new realities of European geopolitics and the direct utility of defense spending.

M3 - Net publication - Internet publication

ER -