NATO AND SLOVENIA 15 YEARS ON: HOW ACCURATE WERE PROJECTIONS ABOUT DEFENCE EXPENDITURE

Abstract The financial consequences of NATO membership had been a subject of debate in the reasons for Slovenian accession to the Alliance before 2004. In order to provide projections of financial obligations and defence expenditure of a new NATO member, some authors and institutions had developed appropriate financial assessments. Based on an analysis of the available sources the authors of this article try to find out how accurate those projections were. They recognize objective circumstances responsible for more or less accurate projections, observing a higher quality of assessments about future defence expenditure than those dealing with financial contributions to NATO budget. Among other messages they call for attention in avoiding possible wrong conclusions that the actual reduction of defence budget that had happened in reality is not a consequence of NATO membership as some projected. Key words defence expenditure, financial contributions, NATO membership.