Norway is only spending 1.5% of GDP on defense compared to 3.6% by the US. Norway is a rich country. Why can’t they pay their fair share?
I utterly agree.
It is shameful.
The truth is that the leading politicans and establishment do rely on the much maligned American big brother.
Some military chiefs have tried to raise the alarm, saying things like - we might have decent special forces (they are good), but we don’t have regular troops to defend even Oslo itself.
We now have a conservative government, where our minister of defense has warned about Russia yet our government is only increasing the defence budget a tiny ammount.
Of course we could afford probably going as far as 5 percent and us being quite rich probably could mean we would have a decent defense.
As it is now, we are using large parts of our defense budget on buying the F-35, whilst the navy and army are lagging behind.
To put it short - It is shameful that a country as rich as Norway, lying on the Russian border, does not even fulfill the modest 2 percent requirement.
Estonia though is one of 5 NATO nations who does, and immediately answered America’s call when article 5 was invoked after 911 sending troops to Afghanistan.