Despite wars in Europe and the Middle East, the Pentagon’s top strategists have recently been focused on Asia. Having got members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to promise to spend 3.5% of their GDP on defence and a further 1.5% of GDP on defence-related infrastructure, they have now turned their attention to the budgets of Asian allies. The European formula, they say, is the new “global standard”. That would imply a massive increase in defence budgets from Sapporo to Sydney. To hit 3.5% would add over $150bn per year in defence spending, the biggest rise among allies in the Pacific in 50 years. America’s demand also prompts three questions: what is the right budget level, how should allies spend the money and will they comply?
