Is there an indicator to assess and steer Defense efforts in an alliance?

While European economic or agricultural policies have been steered with the help of several indicators allowing a fine and balanced assessment of Community efforts and objectives, it is surprising that in the area, however strategic, of building Europe in the Defense, there are no indicators other than the defense effort in absolute value, and the ratio of this effort to the GDP of each state.

Yet these two indicators are both imprecise and ineffective. Thus, they do not take into account the sociological, demographic and economic realities of countries. In the case of Germany, for example, its endemic low birth rate restricts the size of the armed forces much more than budgetary constraints, while in Poland or Romania, it is the reverse. Likewise, the scope of these indicators is very vague, with the consequence of great disparity between the figures presented by the states. Thus, France does not count the gendarmerie forces, for example, in its Defense budget perimeter, while Greece and Italy include them. With such weaknesses, these indicators are incapable of allowing a coherent, balanced and therefore unifying management of the effort to build European Defense.

When designing the European section of the Defense Base, we came to the same conclusion, and had to design our own management indicators. This is how we created the DEED diagram. This repository makes it possible to synthesize 5 relevant coefficients relating to the defense effort in the context specific to each country, and therefore to steer an effective and precise policy at national and European level. It is on the basis of this work that this article is built, and proposes a new reference system based on 5 thematic indicators, a diagram and a summary indicator.

1- The Defense Demographic Coefficient or CDD

It represents the demographic effort of the State for Defense, namely the number of active soldiers, vis-à-vis the population "eligible for the defense effort", namely the population between 18 and 35 years old. . It is not necessary to go into greater precision, such as eliminating incapacitated persons, for the rate of incapacity in the countries of the Union must be approximately the same.

CDD = Number of active soldiers / Population between 18 and 35 years old.

All career soldiers, under contract, or conscripts performing national service for more than 10 months, that is to say receiving sufficient military instruction, are considered active military personnel. Safety and security functions (gendarmerie and firefighters outside the base, customs, coast guard, civil security) should not be counted.

In France, the fixed-term contract is equal to 1,7%. 

2- The Reserve Demographic Coefficient or CDR

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