The problem with Trump is the same as with your post: you don't even know what you're talking about. The 2 percent was agreed on only in 2014 as a response to Russian annexation of Crimea, and the goal was to reach it in 10 years, which we now have collectively as NATO. 18 members spend 2% or more, and the pressure is on for the rest.
Do they have some explaining to do? Of course. But this is not a reason to threaten military allies of more than 70 years by saying Russia can invade them with impunity. Its like I'm a week late on a payment and the landlord promises to send a pack of mobsters to kick me out if I don't pony up the next day. Let's not talk about the emissions that is absolutely insane coming from the worst offender by far.
Now the GOP is going to block the 'slight' spend of 60 billion in aid because it is using Ukraine as a bargaining chip for its anti-immigrant policies.
This is about Trump, but beyond him the US might become a very unreliable and chaotic partner. I'm worried this will backfire. If it does, on the long term, China will start to look a lot more interesting to some European countries as a force of stability.
There are things you are not seemingly aware of, to your point.
But while I do agree NATO allies should spend 2% or more on the militaries in a good faith effort, the spending value itself is kind of a dumb metric if for nothing other than they could just spend money and have poorly trained militaries anyway. It’s a rallying point to be angry about by people who didn’t know what NATO even was before Trump started complaining about it.
Going back to the awareness issue, the United States and allies across the world have been working to stop Russian aggression in Ukraine, and potentially elsewhere like the Baltic states or other formerly occupied Soviet Union states. Many of those in leadership in Europe and elsewhere are concerned about Trump because they do not, for good reason, trust him to act faithfully on the commitments that the United States has made in Europe.
Vladimir Putin believes that the United States and its influence should be degraded in Europe and that European states should instead be under the influence of Russia. This is a net negative for the United States obviously, and the concern here is that Donald Trump seems to either agree or find himself apathetic toward this because he doesn’t seem to understand that he’s being played for a fool to the detriment of the United States and European partners.
To try and paint a more clear picture, if the United States were to fail to honor its security commitments to Europe, it calls into question the ability of the United States to honor any strategic commitment. This pulls not just European countries closer to Russian influence, but causes the United States a massive headache in the Pacific as South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan (never mind the Philippines or others in South East Asia) stand to be sucked into the sphere of Chinese influence which means that the United States loses military, diplomatic, and economic capabilities and leverage.
You might say “so what?” and to that I’d say you’ll find our country worse off economically, higher prices for many goods, and whatever meager international influence exists today to cooperate on global or regional issues will be significantly degraded.
The agreement does not even call for European nations to spend 2% on NATO, it calls for them to simply spend 2% of their GDP on building up their armed forces. When Trump claims that the failure to meet this future goal means that they owe the US billions of dollars simply illuminates how little he understands about NATO in general.
Wasn't Trump specifically complaining about many NATO members not seriously working towards the 2% of their GDPs they were expected to spend on defense?
Which was also in the news around February since Germany seriously committed to meeting that requirement in response to Ukraine, thus effectively saying that he was not all too unreasonable to demand that?
Not to support Trump here, but taken the other way, look at how much value and effectiveness America is bringing to the NATO table. And the cost of having access to that power was a mere 2% of GDP (something that many EU countries that were incredibly reluctant to meet are now increasing frantically to make up for lost time).
Because of Trump, US allies have to guard more corners than before. It's a serious problem and I think Trump is actually giving Russia/China an unfair advantage.
He has already destroyed the Asian partnerships against China that Obama started, he also got out of numerous Western partnerships because it wasn't his signature on it.
I would say that the problem is not Europe, it's 100% Trump. Allies won't back him since they can't trust him. Everyone knows he's trying to have as much as personal gain as possible. Even meddling in European affairs,. Eg. Ukraine for the clear sake of money).
Every time Trump suggests to help countries handle their affairs, you know he's going for the "pay Trump, get US military assistance" card, it's nuts.
The Western alliance since WO II can't survive in it's current form if Trump would get another term, they are all waiting till someone sane comes back. If it doesn't happen, it will become a serious problem :(
TLDR; If you wouldn't trust Trump as a business partner, how can other countries trust him. You can't unite/partner with a person like that.
Edit: if down vote. Please share something that Trump seems trustworthy without personal gain. I haven't seen any situation during his entire term, trying to redirect US-money to his pockets.
You almost had it. The US spend a good portion of the defense budget propping up NATO which is why European countries can get by with spending less. Love him or hate him, what Trump was trying to do in getting NATO to pull its fair share in defense spending was a good idea. Sure the US could spend waaay less and still ensure it won't get invaded (they'd have to come by sea or from Canada or Mexico). But Europe would piecemeal become part of a new Russian or Chinese Union.
Trump has been specifically talking about the countries which fail to spend the 2% of GDP on military which is (apparently) mandated by the treaty. The UK is fine in this regard (along with only four other NATO powers though).
President Trump isn't really interested in dismantling NATO, just in making sure that the US doesn't have to continue to shoulder quite such a large fraction of the costs.
> "I'm taking the USA out of NATO" is synonym with "the west can trust Russia".
Trump was all over the place so it's hard to know what his exact positions were but he definitely bitched about European countries for not maintaining the NATO spending goal of 2 percent of economic output [0] which seemed to be his main gripe with NATO from what I remember.
One quote from the article: "Mr. Trump appeared especially annoyed, officials in the meeting said, with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and her country’s military spending of 1 percent of its gross domestic product."
Apart from that, he was generally a source of chaos at the 2018 NATO summit, 1) demanding that NATO allies increase per-GDP spending ahead of schedule or the US would "go it alone" (and hijacking a meeting already in progress to make these demands), 2) accusing Germany of being "totally controlled" by Russia, 3) and giving a parallel-reality final press conference touting that NATO partners had agreed to significant increases in spending (which said partners denied).
You almost had it. Obama during his two terms pushed other NATO members to increase their spending to the 2% GDP target. They agreed and set long term goals to increase their spending and started to do so.
Trump stupidly described other NATO members as "owing" the US. Not only had several countries met their spending goals by the end of the Obama admin most of the alliance was on track with increased spending including targeted equipment upgrade spending. Trump's complaints were that other NATO members hadn't met their goals ahead of the agreed upon schedule. This was going to be used for a pretext for withdrawing the US from NATO.
NATO funding is not a simple issue. There's direct and indirect expenditures that "fund" NATO. It's not some protection racket. Funding can be direct funding I.e. military units/equipment maintained as a rapid response force or indirect funding I.e. spending to upgrade or buy equipment to keep up with the overall norms of the alliance.
Trump forced the hand of unwilling NATO countries to spend their 2% for their defense budget. How is this against the alliance? I would say it's the opposite.
When nations agree to targets, and they did a long time ago, its material. That it's not technically part of the treaty is relevant, but not so important.
The 2% target was established long ago, there's a renewed 'agreement' since Trump took office, but it's along the same lines: European states will wait for Trump to be out of office and then ignore it.
The fact remains America provides defence for Europe, and Europe is willing to let that happen because, well, it's very expensive, among other things.
well it would be cool to know what happens inside trump's head.
I mean I'm from germany and even school kids learn at least something about the nato. (especially their parts about how the system works).
But somehow trump does not understand it. he thinks that the money is the most important thing, however the nato only set a goal like 1 or 2 years ago which should preferable spend starting in 2024 (not, now of course). and now he blames every country who didn't reached the goal of 2024? or does he thinks that every country just somehow needs to pay the same amount that the usa uses for their military? or what does he think?
i mean yeah every political person does lie. but most of them don't lie upfront or show others that they don't have an idea. but trump looks just silly from the outside.
I also don't understand what the labour or partners of trump are thinking, it does not look like they can do anything useful for their country in the next 4 years.
well at least I can somewhat why people voted in favor of him. I mean with voting you can express yourself, normally. however if you can only vote between sodom and gomorra you can only express that you are more unhappy with sodom... that doesn't mean you are happy with gomorra, tough.
This is not a left or right issue. You said that in return for a climate change tariff on US goods you wanted EU nations to meet their spending agreements for NATO. Now multiple sources have been provided to you showing that the EU NATO members are doing great what they agreed to and that claiming that they are not paying their way is inaccurate at best and downright dishonest at worst. You are not responding to those facts and instead have turned it into a left Vs right issue.
Regardless of my political affiliation I am aware that international politics is nuanced, unfortunately your president is just learning that himself. And yes you can disagree in principal but you don't seem to understand the system so it is difficult to accept that you disagree in principal when your sole argument (which has been thoroughly debunked for you) is based on claims made by donald trump. Do you have any other issues with NATO that you disagree with?
Based on all his public statements and all the insider accounts from both career civil servants and even his own political appointees, Trump never bothered to understand the subtlety of NATO or really any other policy. Just read what Fiona Hill and John Bolton among others have to say. He wanted out of NATO. He respected the word of Putin, he hated Ukraine and it was 100% personal. He refused to press Putin on election interference when he met him in Finland, but withheld Congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine unless they did him a favor to help his own electoral fortunes.
The 2% defense spending target was negotiated by Obama and agreed by NATO members before Trump took office. Trump took that cue and railed that America was paying for NATO as though it were a dues-based organization. When he went to Brussels to push for compliance, he raised the prospect of 4% as a new spending target even when the US was tracking to drop below 3%. While he may have achieved a policy victory here and there it was only ever by coincidence. I've not seen any indication has understands or even cares about any policy whatsoever and only says things that get him attention.
If not the US, then who? Trump, for all his faults, was spot on about the Europe's lack of fiscal participation in NATO. They were enjoying the privileges of what you described without ever worrying about the need for protecting it because the US was footing the bill. If it wasn't for NATO, do you really think the Baltic States would still be free from Russia today? And what about the Pacific islands? Nobody is stepping up to the plate to protect the sovereignty of those countries, something they themselves aren't capable of doing against a force like China.
With all due respect, that's missing the point. If you believe that NATO is a good thing and successfully deters aggression against its member states, Trump's near-abrogation of America's treaty commitments objectively did far, far more damage to that deterrence than Germany underfunding its army. Ergo, Trump's nonsense about "paying" and your defense thereof seems terribly insincere. Either you don't believe in NATO's mission, or you are confused about how it works.
Do they have some explaining to do? Of course. But this is not a reason to threaten military allies of more than 70 years by saying Russia can invade them with impunity. Its like I'm a week late on a payment and the landlord promises to send a pack of mobsters to kick me out if I don't pony up the next day. Let's not talk about the emissions that is absolutely insane coming from the worst offender by far.
Now the GOP is going to block the 'slight' spend of 60 billion in aid because it is using Ukraine as a bargaining chip for its anti-immigrant policies.
This is about Trump, but beyond him the US might become a very unreliable and chaotic partner. I'm worried this will backfire. If it does, on the long term, China will start to look a lot more interesting to some European countries as a force of stability.
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