Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Why NATO Wants Montenegro (Not for Its Military Might)

Its military will be useless, but it's a signal to post-Soviet countries that they, too, can join the West.

May 1, 2017 at 12:49 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Not so intimidating.
Photographer: Francois Nel/Getty Images for BEGOC

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Late last week, Montenegro's parliament voted to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, adding perhaps the most militarily useless member to the alliance. The move served no purpose except to maintain the shaky hopes of Georgia and Ukraine that they might be allowed to join, too -- someday.

Montenegro, with 2,080 military personnel, will have the second-smallest military in the alliance after Luxembourg, with its 900-strong defense force. Despite U.S. President Donald Trump's insistence that NATO members spend the agreed-upon 2 percent of economic output on defense, few people in the U.S. or NATO appear worried about Montenegro's inability to meet that target. This year, in line with previous practice, it's spending about 50 million euros ($54.5 million), or about 1.3 of its gross domestic product. It's the smallest military budget of any NATO member. Albania spends more than twice as much, Luxembourg five times as much.