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Trump at NATO: “Germany Is a Captive of Russia”
President Donald Trump, in a meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, blasted Germany for making a pipeline deal with Russia for energy, saying, “we’re going to have to do something because we’re not going to put up with it. We can’t put up with it. And it’s inappropriate. So, we have to talk about the billions and billions of dollars that being paid to the country that we’re supposed to be protecting you against.”
Published in General
Since when is a putsch a free election? They overthrew a democratically elected government.
When Joe Biden and his family can make lots of money from it.
And well . . . Obama told them the same thing, and the left didn’t have fits about it.
But that’s different, because reasons!
I believe that we spend less than 4% of our GDP on defense, whic is due to drop to 2.7% in the future.
Please note that there have been numerous deaths among NATO troops in Afghanistan on our behalf after the 9/11 attacks.
Touché! There was a great parody of that at the beginning of Morning Joe this morning.
After that President was bought off by Putin and his people protested resulting in violent crackdowns.
So they elect the ice cream man who had been in the Russian orbit but was bought off by German money. Much better?
Ukraine is a complete mess, totally corrupt, totally up for sale. What interest is to us other than to neocon warmongers like Sen. McCain?
But pipelines have a start and a terminus. And a valve to turn it on and off. LNG ports can take LNG from anywhere, hence more flexibility, less dependence on Russian gas.
Is it better to have the leadership of Ukraine indebted to our allies instead of our enemies? Is that even a serious question?
#MeToo
and it always will be.
When their aim is to drag you into fighting their war, then it is definitely not in our interests. Or haven’t you figured that out yet. Allies can be very, very dangerous.
Well, that, or they could just withdraw from NATO.
Oh, believe you me, that ain’t news to a Canuckistani Tory. We’re well aware of every soldier lost in Afghanistan.
The difference is that Obama never sent the sort of signals that the US might be willing to pull out of NATO.
Trump has been sending such signals. For all we know, he may have said it explicitly to the other NATO leaders in private.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/world/europe/trump-nato.html
This is what the other side doesn’t get about conservatives and multi-state organizations. Conservatives aren’t inherently opposed to multi-state organizations, per se, but such organizations need to be held accountable, and that can never happen unless everybody involved knows that member states are willing to walk away.
How do we know? How can we make a judgment when congress has not passed a budge in almost 10 years? It’s unknowable. Which I’m beginning to thin is part of the reason congress hasn’t passed a budget in almost 10 years.
We know because the White House publishes the Economic Report of the President annually whether there is a budget passed or not. The most recent report was issued in February of 2018 more than a year after Trump was inaugurated.
If you look at table B-18 in the linked file (page 558 of pdf file or page 553 of the report). According to Trump’s White House, we spent 3.1% of GDP on national defense in 2017.
FWIW, as you can clearly see from the schedule, Obama spent more than 3.1% of GDP in every year of his Presidency.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/ERP_2018_Final-FINAL.pdf
Well yeah, as a percentage. It’s not Trump’s fault the GDP went up.
Oh wait, it is.
Another technology worthy of research . . .
As Roseanne Roseannadanna said, “There’s always something.” Making X better sometimes makes Y worse. Yep, it happens a lot. Hopefully research will find a way to minimize the Y when X happens . . .
a) I don’t know why I thought it was 7%. Mea culpa.
b) Yabbut, my point is, how much of that spending should really count towards the NATO obligation? I mean, I know the NATO agreement doesn’t specify how much of a member’s defence spending has to go specifically to defending Europe, but still.
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” – Thomas Sowell
I think the point of the 2% mark is so that we can reasonably rely on their ability to field a fighting force should they be called upon.
TANSTAAFL.
Obama seemed determined to reprioritize the DoD as the “Department of Social Justice War and Environmental Activism.” That stuff is expensive.
Yeah, I always the point of the minimum was to ensure the members maintain a military and not make the mistake many countries made after WWI.
FWIW, When I was in the Army’s brigade scale quick reaction force (82nd Airborne) it was obvious our focus was clearly on Latin and South America – the linguists in our military intelligence battallion were exclusively Spanish speaking.
Too much detail. The vital thing is to invest The People’s money in a sub-cutting edge technology before they lose interest.
I haven’t looked at the report, but I have a question. Does it take into account defense spending by government agencies other than the DOD? The Department of Energy (my former employer) plays a big role in defense spending, as do other departments . . .