“France has delivered almost nothing”

Interview with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary-general of NATO from 2009-2014: ‘France Has Delivered Almost Nothing’ (msn.com). Several quotable lines from that interview like: “Putin wanted less NATO. He got more NATO.” He does make the claim that: “France has delivered almost nothing. The scale of French deliveries is equivalent to what Denmark has offered – valued at $160 million.”

To maintain this war, my off-the-cuff estimate is that we collectively need to provide Ukraine $100-$120 billion (with a b) a year of military and economic aid. This has been done for 2022, but needs to be done for 2023, 2024, etc. 

There is a “Ukraine Support Tracker” offered by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. This is worth looking at in depth: Ukraine Support Tracker | Kiel Institute (ifw-kiel.de).

A few highlights from this tracker:

  1. Aid commitments by country: 
    1. U.S.: 42.6 billion (Euros)
    2. EU: 15.7 billion
    3. UK: @ 6 billion (eyeballing the chart)
    4. Germany: @ < 4 billion
    5. Poland: @ 3 billion
    6. Canada: @ 3 billion
    7. France: @ 2 billion
    8. Japan: @ 1 billion
  2. No total given, but it is around 80 billion according to an eyeball examination of this chart. Other estimates have been higher.
  3. Aid as a percent of GDP (including EU contributions):
    1. Estonia: 1.0%
    2. Latvia: 0.8%
    3. Poland: 0.6%
    4. Slovakia, Lithuania, Greece, Czechia: 0.3%
    5. UK: 0.2%
    6. U.S.: 0.2%
    7. Portugal, Denmark: 0.2%
    8. France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Norway, etc.: less than 0.2% (but 0.2% if rounded up).

Anyhow, it does not seem that France is lagging behind the rest of the European countries. Rasmussen seems overly harsh in his condemnation. France is primarily providing financial aid, vice military aid. The journalist linked to the Kiel Institute in his article, leading me to suspect he had doubts about Rasmussen’s statement, but did not contend with him over it in the interview. All the major European and NATO countries appear to be contributing at least 0.2% of their GDP to Ukraine (if you include their share of EU aid). See this blown-up chart which also tracks EU aide: Government support to Ukraine: By donor country GDP, incl. and excl. EU share (23degrees.io).

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1455

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