Andrew Korybko
The Russian-Polish security dilemma will likely serve
as the impetus for fully unleashing and properly managing the capabilities of
European NATO as a whole per the US’ National Defense Strategy
RT drew
attention in late January to a report by Izvestia about the West’s alleged
plans to launch a “Defense,
Security, and Resilience Bank” (DSRB) by 2027. Their article relies on
in-depth research by the Atlantic
Council, which came up with the idea of what was at first called the “NATO
Bank”. The purpose is to provide “low-interest loans for defense
modernization”, thus facilitating the goal of NATO members spending 5% of GDP
on defense without significantly curtailing social and infrastructure spending.
Instead of slashing such
programs to redirect funds to defense at the risk of helping
populist-nationalists during the next elections and/or provoking unrest, they’d
only spend a fraction of the principal each year servicing their DSRB loan
instead of paying the cost upfront as if it was part of their annual
expenditures. The Executive Summary of the Atlantic Council’s in-depth research
hyperlinked to above also notes that “An additional critical function of the
DSR bank would be to underwrite the risk for commercial banks”.
This would then “enabl[e] them to extend financing to defense companies across the supply chain.” The supplementary purpose is to finance large-scale orders that these companies themselves are unable to afford on their own and most member states can’t finance either without potential populist pushback. Defense companies can then expand production, pump out the requested military-technical equipment at scale, and then sell it at a much more affordable price for accelerating NATO’s planned militarization.
