With his next thought being
WTF is a “Montenegro” anyway? Maybe Jeff Sessions can tell me when I get back.
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I guess you’re right. Heck, some of these countries didn’t even exist in 1949.
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This is something I never thought about before, but you have a point (and a chart)… I wonder how and why the 2% goal was set, and why the US pays so much more than that… Makes me think we were already paying way more than the other guys and lobbied to get them to a 2% commitment… It’s almost like we could lower it to 1.5% if it meant everyone paid up (that’s fake math btw). EDIT: of course, it would be interesting to see the real numbers rather than percentages… What’s Greece’s GDP? 2% of that must be so much less than what Germany pays at 1.2%…
The whole thing reminds me of the Delian League where Athens basically forced the whole Aegean to pay for the army that ran their empire…
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I see NATO as the organizational structure for America’s Cold War auxiliaries, serving American interests. In the Cold War days America was clearly the preferable hegemon, but I do not see America as a good ally. I hope that I live to see the day when NATO is made obsolete by a strong common European defense, but unitl then NATO is better than nothing.
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This says pretty much everything I would have.
I think the US pays so much more for two reasons:
- We as a nation are fascinated with and fixated on our military.
- Our military is super-lucrative for a select group of people who have outsized influence in our government.
For all of our spending, our current military is not sized or equipped to meet its two-major-regional-conflict goal. I’m not sure if that’s still even the goal.
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JESUS. FUCKING. CHRIST. Does tRump still not understand how NATO works? Or is he just pretending otherwise to play to his (equally ignorant) base at this point? Surely by this time it has been explained to tRump, over and over, how this works - that he still wouldn’t understand the situation is… well, quite plausible, really; the man’s a total idiot. Either way this is incredibly embarrassing that the president would say this on the world stage in front of other leaders. Acting as if a 2% fucking guideline was money that was being paid into some fund that the US has been paying everyone else’s share of, and thus was owed, Jesus. To add insult to injury, the US is the only country to have evoked the mutual defense clause to get other countries involved in fighting one of our intractable wars.
If the US was asking that question, the European response would be:
“Uh, besides fighting your war in Afghanistan?”
Well, they could care less, but someone would have to give them a fuck to give, first. (I’m not sure what the fuck-to-caring ratio is.)
Except in this case, it’s as if you spent a good percentage of your income buying yourself booze, and then, as soon as you and your roommates agreed that you might all contribute drinks for an upcoming party, acted as if they owed you money to pay for your years of drinking. They’d look at you like you were a fucking asshole, and they’d be right.
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I agree with everything except the part where NATO is better than nothing. US influence seems like it’s getting more and more toxic by the minute. That’s my perspective from inside. At some point soon the harm we do will outweigh any lingering good. For some countries it already does.
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I’m pretty confident that this will be 45’s last foreign trip as President.
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In what way was the war in Afghanistan Europe’s war? That was the US’s war, through and through. (I don’t think you actually read my comment)
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Yeah, we know Greece spent a ton on acquiring german tanks, because Turkey, and subsequently went bankrupt. Easy to spend 2% of your GDP when it’s in the toilet, you owe money for military hardware and the rest of europe is bailing you out constantly. Estonia has a GDP of only about 22 billion. Which leaves only Poland and the UK. One shares a border with Russia (like Estonia), the other has a long history of military conquest.
How about we lower that 2% to something actually more reasonable? I mean, Russia spent about 70 billion in 2016 on its military, that’s less than France and Germany spent combined:
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The thing is that the US overspends because of internal politics, and the combined forces of NATO are enough of a deterrent against attack even without the US.
So yes, NATO countries don’t spend what they agreed, but why should they? The US will not reduce spending and under Trump it will most likely increase it. Even if it did, it would still massively overspend everyone else.
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The camera work + video editing make this speech look like he’s addressing the contestants on the Apprentice …
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Only Trumpolini could make NATO look like a summit meeting of mob families
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I don’t know why the goal was set at 2%. Honestly that doesn’t seem like a huge amount. The UK is right on the 2% line there.
One can argue whether spending is to high or too low, but in a coalition like NATO, everyone needs to contribute.
One of the reasons our spending is so high, besides government being wasteful in general, the defense lobby, and that we are one of the few countries DEVELOPING the weapons everyone else buys - is that out dated notion that we should have a large enough force to fight wars on two fronts. This concept, possibly was warranted in the 50s, but now is simply over kill. The founding fathers would be shitting at the size of our full time Federal army.
Also remember, for the US, a lot of that spending is money put back into the US economy, as it buys primarily from US companies. That’s one of the reasons the lobby for defense contracts is a soft sell - strengthen the armed forces and create jobs? What’s the down side?
While I am sure the tanks didn’t help, Greece’s economic woes aren’t the fault of the military spending. It is a mess in various areas.
Because everyone ordered the pizza and agreed to pay their share. If they aren’t going to meet that commitment, they need to revisit the overall size of the pizza, and who gets which slice.
I contend one of the reasons Euro spending is generally lower is because they don’t have to. Like having a friend who has all the best video games you know you can use at any time. Why buy your own copies?
I’ve already said I would like to see a reduction in spending over all.
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“Couldn’t care less.” Could not care less.
I for one would like to see Canada dramatically increase its spending to match NATO levels. It’s one of the reasons I voted Liberal in the federal election; the Conservatives have consistently underfunded, in particular, the Navy. Canada needs to be able to manufacture its own ships and patrol its northern coast, as the ice melts. We need bases in the Arctic and personnel to man them.
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Sorry, I some words and meant that would be Europe’s response to the US asking that question. Which makes Trump’s demands all the more ironic.
Well, he could have. But he didn’t need to.
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