Coincidentally, this was posted yesterday. Note this invasion plan was from 1979, which is younger than me. So it is kinda important to remember how and why NATO existed in the first place. Is it still needed today? I dunno, make your case.
Our last military alliance didn’t do us any favours.
That’s pretty crap when the members are meeting the agreed upon funding, but the US’ military budget is just so far off the charts and only getting moreso. Why should all the other member governments increase their military funding to match the US?
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I didn’t suggest that they do. I suggested they meet the 2% guideline, which only 4 other nations are doing.
Conversely, the US should reduce their spending some. It doesn’t need to be that high. Our Navy is so OP it’s comical.
In 2018 the expectation was that 8 allies will meet it, but I don’t know the follow up on it. And they’ve increased spending for the years after the commitment with the deadline of 2024.
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Haven’t seen the 2018 numbers, but if more are working to meet them, then cool. Unless NATO is obsolete, which I don’t think it totally is.
The other NATO nations are a moderating influence on American adventurism. Do you think the US will actually back off military interventions if not a part of NATO? 
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Depends on who need intervening. With NATO, one would HAVE to for even the smaller countries. Otherwise, eh, maybe let Estonia handle themselves, for example.
I was referring more to non-European interventions, like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, etc., rather than mutual defense. That hasn’t really come up in the lase 60 years or so…
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OH, well, we are talking about NATO and Europe, since my confusion. And while not wide scale, there has been fighting in Europe in the last 20 years, just not against NATO.
Your original statement was:
which is much more general. And the examples I gave were NATO examples, with forces from NATO countries fighting side-by-side with US troops.
The conflicts in Europe in the last 2 decades also weren’t examples of mutual defense, but rather interventions in regional human rights crises and containment efforts to keep local dust-ups from spreading. Those were NATO-led, but still heavily biased toward US interests in the region.
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Anyone know if the cheto-hitlers Russian language translator(s) are still alive?
Thank the gods we didn’t. We have people in Afghanistan, Iraq (peace keeping and training) and let CIA torture flights in even though we weren’t in NATO. Think how much worse it could have been.
The funding guidelines:
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Are explicitly and deliberately non-binding.
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Were negotiated in response to US diplomatic pressure, which was in turn motivated by Raytheon et al commanding their pet Senators to go drum up some sales.
EU military spending is already more than adequate; Russia is outspent by the combined EU nations by a large margin.
US military funding, OTOH, is ludicrously excessive.
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Won’t someone give me a gun?
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Regarding NATO, see this thread for some history that should be better known:
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Yeah - West Germany was part of NATO. Who do you think made up pretty much ALL of the West German army command? Ex-Nazis. So being part of NATO, it stands to reason some of their experienced military leaders who have actually directed or lead troops in combat would be tasked with roles in NATO - just like former Allied military were. Only now they weren’t Nazis, they were West Germans dealing with the very real threat of the Iron Curtain.
There will never be justice or retribution for what the Nazi’s did. The Nuremberg and other trials were token gestures that punished some of the worse. But pragmatically who is going to run and be in your military post WWII? Ex-Nazis, and sons of Ex-Nazis. Who is leading Germany’s government and military today? Decedents of Nazis.
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And here we go:
Still setting up for war on Iran.
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I find it more than a little ironic that he’s anti-NATO, but wants an Arab NATO…
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