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Report on Allied Contributions to the Common Defense
A Report to the United States Congress by the Secretary of Defense
U.S. Department of Defense
March 1998
Statistical Appendix
The purpose of this Appendix is to provide detailed statistics and supporting data upon which the evaluations presented in the Department’s 1998 Report to Congress on Allied Contributions to the Common Defense are based. This Appendix is provided as a companion document to that Report, which presents the Department’s assessment of the relative contributions toward shared defense and security objectives made by the United States, our NATO allies, key security partners in the Pacific (Japan and the Republic of Korea), and the countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
Purpose
This Appendix is organized into four sections, described below.
A. Selected Indicators. Data upon which many of the Report’s assessments are based involve a comparison of a country’s contributions relative to its ability to contribute. This section provides the data upon which this analysis is based. The analysis is conducted in three stages:
Similarly, a country’s ability to contribute is expressed as a share of the total of all nations in the Report (i.e., share of total GDP, share of total labor force). These data are shown in Table A–1.
By creating a ratio of the share of contribution divided by the share of ability to contribute, analysts can draw conclusions as to the extent and the equity of nations’ efforts. These ratios are provided in Table A–5 through A–7.
When this analysis results in a ratio of around 1.0, a country’s contribution is judged to be in balance with its ability to contribute. Generally speaking, the Department gives a nation credit for “substantial contributions” relative to its ability to contribute when it achieves a ratio of 1.2 or greater. Ratios of 0.8 or less indicate very low effort relative to ability to contribute.
B. Additional Statistics. This section provides data values upon which many of the Selected Indicators are based. Most of the tables in this section also provide information such as subtotals, shares, and ranks. NOTE: In Tables B–9 through B–12, only shares and ranks can be presented, since actual data values are classified.
C. Bilateral Cost Sharing. This section presents detailed estimates of nations’ bilateral cost sharing support for the United States during 1996, the most recent year for which complete data are available.
Data Notes.This section presents sources and notes pertaining to the data used in the Report and summarized in this Appendix.
Selected Indicators of Contributions Relative to Ability to Contribute — Forces
Selected Indicators of Contributions Relative to Ability to Contribute — Other
Selected Indicators of Contributions Relative to Ability to Contribute — Forces Ratios
Selected Indicators of Contributions Relative to Ability to Contribute — Other Ratios
Gross Domestic Product Per Capita — 1997 Constant U.S. Dollars
Total Active–Duty Military Personnel as a Percent of the Labor Force
Ground Combat Capability (in U.S. Armored Brigade Equivalents)
Country Cost Sharing Tables
The Department has every confidence that the data presented in this Appendix are as complete, current, and comprehensive as they can be, given the deadlines established in the legislation.
Timing and Limitations
The FY 1998 Defense Authorization Act stipulates that allies should take certain actions or achieve certain results in various indicators of responsibility sharing by September 30, 1998. Due to unavoidable time lags in the collection and analysis of the necessary data, this Report relies on statistics for 1996 and 1997. Projected data for 1998 are either not available for many key elements necessary to the analysis, or where available, are generally unreliable. The Department is therefore unable to assess countries” performance against Congressional targets set for 1998, and — due to these time lags in data collection and analysis — will be unable to do so for another one to two years.
The FY 1998 Defense Authorization Act also requires the Department to measure the year–to–year change in nations” responsibility sharing performance, specifically between February 28, 1997 and February 28, 1998. Because of the timing issues described above, data are simply not yet available as of this writing to permit this specific comparison. Instead, the Department has compiled relevant comparisons for the two most recent years for which complete and reliable data are available.
Data Sources
Defense spending data are provided by a variety of sources. NATO”s December 1997 report on Financial and Economic Data Relating to NATO Defense is the primary source for past and current defense spending data for the NATO nations, including the United States. Sources of defense spending data for Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the GCC nations include U.S. embassies in the host nations, recent national defense white papers (where available), and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
For purposes of standardization and comparability, this Report presents defense spending figures using the NATO definition of what constitutes defense spending wherever possible. According to this approach, defense expenditures are defined as outlays made by national governments specifically to meet the needs of the armed forces. In this context, the term “national government” limits “defense expenditures” to those of central or federal governments, to the exclusion of state, provincial, local, or municipal authorities. Regardless of when payments are charged against the budget, defense expenditures for any given period include all payments made during that period. In cases where actual 1997 defense outlays are not available, final defense budget figures are substituted. War damage compensation, veterans” pensions, payments out of retirement accounts, and civil defense and stockpiling costs for industrial raw materials or semi–furnished products are not included in this definition of defense spending.
GDP data for NATO members, the Republic of Korea, and Japan are taken from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). GDP data for the GCC countries (which are not reported by OECD) are drawn from the World Bank and the WEFA Group.
UN peacekeeping data are taken from UN reports for 1997. In the past the Department supplemented the UN figures with data on voluntary country contributions in support of Security Council resolutions (amounting to roughly $2.7 billion in 1996). Because comparable data on voluntary contributions are not available for 1997, prior year data have been adjusted in order to permit valid trend analysis of UN contributions.
Military personnel data are taken from the Annual NATO Press Release (December 1997) and the International Institute of Strategic Studies” The Military Balance 1997–1998.
Military forces data (ground, naval, and air) are drawn from a variety of sources.
In general, forces data are based on information provided by nations under the CFE data exchange (for those forces limited by CFE), supplemented with data from responses to the NATO”s Defense Planning Questionnaire (for those nations that participate in NATO”s integrated defense planning process), open sources (such as Jane”s Defense publications and magazines and the International Institute for Strategic Studies” (IISS) Military Balance for 1997–98), and DoD sources.
Ground combat capability data assess all major combat systems, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, armored infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, anti–tank weapons, and attack helicopters for army and marine units. Transport, small arms, or combat support assets are not included. The quantity and quality of nations” equipment holdings are assessed using widely used static measures. Estimates are normalized using the score of a U.S. armored brigade in order to express each nation”s static ground force potential in terms of a standardized unit of measure.
Naval tonnage data includes aircraft carriers, attack submarines (non–strategic), principal surface combatants (cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes), mine warfare ships and craft (including mine layers), patrol combatant ships, and amphibious warfare ships. Patrol craft, amphibious craft, or service support craft are not included.
Air forces data includes fixed–wing combat aircraft (air force, naval, and marine assets) in the following categories: fighter/interceptor, fighter/bomber, conventional bomber, and tactical fighter reconnaissance aircraft (including combat capable trainer and electronic warfare aircraft). Not included are maritime patrol aircraft (MPA), anti–submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft, transports or air–to–air refueling aircraft, strategic bombers, or any support or special mission aircraft.
Multinational military activities data assess national contributions to NATO”s Reaction Forces and other multilateral formations. Brigade equivalents do not include organic divisional support assets.
Cost sharing data are provided by U.S. embassies and DoD components, including the military departments and commands. DoD components also provide estimates of U.S. stationing costs by country. Extensive manual evaluations are required to determine the estimated value of contributions made by each nation to the United States, and of U.S. expenses incurred overseas. Cost sharing data and stationing cost estimates for a given year are collected by the Department during the spring of the following year, and are then evaluated and published as budget exhibits. Due to the Congressional deadline for this Report, the Department has used estimates for 1996. Data gaps and the classification of some figures prevent full coverage of cost sharing and stationing cost estimates for all nations covered in this report. For example, cost offset percentages cannot be calculated for all GCC nations (except Saudi Arabia) due to lack of information regarding U.S. stationing costs in those countries.
Bilateral cost sharing is divided into two categories, according to whether the costs are borne by the host nation on–budget (direct cost sharing), or only as imputed values of foregone revenues (indirect cost sharing). Direct cost sharing includes costs borne by host nations in support of stationed U.S. forces for rents on privately owned land and facilities, labor, utilities, facilities, and vicinity improvements. Indirect cost sharing includes foregone rents and revenues, including rents on government–owned land and facilities occupied or used by U.S. forces at no or reduced cost to the United States, and tax concessions or customs duties waived by the host nation.
Foreign assistance data are provided by the OECD. The OECD”s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) encourages commitments of international aid, coordinated aid policies, and consistent aid reporting. The DAC”s definition of “official development assistance” (ODA) is recognized as the international standard for reporting aid provided to developing countries and multilateral institutions. This is immensely useful, since “aid” is an extremely broad term, and encompasses many different types of assistance, which can make contributions from various nations very difficult to compare directly.
OECD has a 27–nation membership (G–27), including all NATO countries and Japan. The G–27 establishes economic and political conditions that nations must meet before receiving assistance (e.g., demonstrated commitment to political reform, and free and fair elections). Subsidies are provided in the form of trade and investment credits, grants, and loan guarantees, and are directed into areas such as food aid, medical supplies, and technical assistance in management training, privatization, bank and regulatory reform, environmental projects, market access/trade, nuclear reactor safety, and democratic institution building. The G–27 is also coordinating nuclear safety assistance to the NIS.
Aid to 13 of the 22 emerging economies of Central Europe and the NIS does not qualify as official development assistance for OECD purposes, but instead is categorized as “official aid” (OA). Both categories, ODA and OA, cover identical types of assistance, with the only difference being the recipient nations. Therefore, total foreign assistance evaluated in this Report is the sum of all ODA and OA.
This Report is based on available data covering 1990 through 1996. At this time, complete and reliable foreign assistance data is available only through 1996 due to complexities and delays in the OECD collection and reporting process, and data are still not complete for some countries for 1995 or 1996. Specifically, 1995 data for Spain, Luxembourg, the Republic of Korea, and Greece reflect ODA disbursements only, as OA data are not yet available. Similarly, 1996 data for the Republic of Korea and Greece also reflect only ODA disbursements. No data are available for Turkey in 1996, nor in any year for Bahrain, Oman, and Qatar.
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