Posted on 07/11/2018 4:46:02 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends)
More fireworks than the 4th of July. – So, NATO Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison has her work cut out for her today, as President Donald Trump (I never tire of typing those three words) meets with his counterparts at the fellow NATO member nations and follows that with a one-on-one settee with the execrable German Prime Minister Angela Merkel.
The President already lit off the first volley of bottle rockets upon landing in Brussels, where the conference is being held, telling the assembled bunch of fake international journalists that…
“Germany is a captive of Russia because it is getting so much of its energy from Russia,” Trump said, taking particular aim at the proposed Nord Stream II gas pipeline, which he has previously criticised.
“Everybody’s talking about it all over the world, they’re saying we’re paying you billions of dollars to protect you but you’re paying billions of dollars to Russia.”
“These countries have to step it up — not over a 10 year period, they have to step it up immediately,” Trump said.
“We’re protecting Germany, France and everybody… this has been going on for decades,” Trump said. “We’re not going to put up with it, we can’t put up with it and it’s inappropriate.”
Ok, well, there you go. That’s the U.S. relationship with NATO in a nutshell. It actually has been the U.S. relationship with NATO for decades, but Mr. Trump is just the first U.S. president who’s been willing to state the truth of the matter publicly. His predecessors, on the rare occasions when they even raised the subject of the European nations’ failure to live up to their funding obligations, did so privately, and obviously without effect. This way, they avoided embarrassing their laggard counterparts and preserved the “international order” they were all so focused on preserving.
But Trump’s a businessman, and could not give a damn about preserving the “international order” about which EU President Donald Tusk (can that really be his real name?) chastised Mr. Trump on Tuesday:
“Dear America, appreciate your allies, after all you don’t have that many,” Tusk said, before reminding Trump that European troops had come to America’s aid following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
“Please remember this tomorrow when we meet at the NATO summit, but above all when you meet President Putin in Helsinki. It is always worth knowing who is your strategic friend and who is your strategic problem,” he said.
But see, the thing is that President Trump correctly identifies NATO “allies” like Germany and Turkey as every bit the “strategic problems” for the United States of America that Russia represents. The first obvious fact is the stark reality that Russia presents no serious military threat to the U.S., yet Germany and the other NATO countries expect the U.S. to continue funding the majority of NATO expenses and spending tens of billions of its dollars every year defending an increasingly hostile Europe from a Russian invasion, just as it has done for the past 73 years.
The European “allies” demand all of this ongoing U.S. largess while at the same time levying draconian tariffs on imports of American-made goods and importing their natural gas from the very country – Russia – from which they contend they must have ongoing U.S. military protection.
The U.S. relationship with its NATO “allies” is almost perfectly analogous to the couple in upstate New York who had to sue their 30 year-old son to force him to move out of the damn house. In the lawsuit, the son contended that his parents had an obligation to just keep funding his layabout lifestyle and allow him to keep living in their home for as long as he wanted to do so.
When World War II came to a final, blessed end in 1945, Germany and much of the rest of Western Europe was in a shambles. Meanwhile, Eastern Europe had been sadly absorbed into the communist orbit of the Soviet Union, which was, along with the U.S., one of the world’s two major military powers. Western Europe needed the protection and support of the United States, and we gave it to them. This was a mutually-advantageous relationship, since it also served what were at the time the strategic interests of the U.S.
Today, the Soviet Union has been dead for 29 years. Russia remains a military power, but is also a country that hardly possesses the financial resources to mount an invasion of Crimea, much less Western Europe. It is long past time for our NATO “allies” to stop occupying a bedroom in America’s home, go out and get a job, and pay their own way. “Paying their own way” means ponying up 2 percent of their GDP (the U.S. currently spends about 5 percent) to pay for real military establishments to protect their own borders.
That’s the clear message that Daddy Donald Trump will be delivering today to Tusk, Merkel, May and the boy princes who rule France and Canada, and it’s a message they all need to heed. Because Daddy Trump isn’t going to be impeached, most likely has another six and a half years to serve in office, and he’s not fooling around.
Ambassador Hutchison is going to have a long and difficult day. But she’s tough, and can take it.
Just another day Donald Trump isn’t fooling around America.
That is all.
Follow me on Twitter at @GDBlackmon
If what we need those NATO bases for is to defend NATO then pulling out kind of ends that need, doesn't it?
That said, we cannot afford to carry countries that can carry themselves. The agreements have to be mutually beneficial and fair. If they won’t step up, we should step away by decreasing our financial support.
What financial support other than troops do we provide?
When we started Naught-O, we thought the problem was Communism, but that turned out to be just the political side of a more general soul rot.
Western Europe’s got it bad.
Through NATO we defend our own interests and operations. NATO bases serve as vital staging areas for a wide variety of U.S. operations.
U.S. pays 22% of the NATO budget. As is the case with the United Nations the U.S. contributes more than one-fifth of the direct, collective funding that keeps NATO’s military and civilian operations on track.
I’ve lived in four European countries. I’ve lived in Germany twice. I speak the language and much of my family is from there originally so I can tell y’all what will happen.
They’ll whinge and whine. They’ll call Trump nasty names. They’ll call Americans nasty names. They’ll huff and puff about making some kind of alliance instead with China or, yes, Russia! They will do ANYTHING OTHER THAN carry their own weight. They are too smug, arrogant and entitled to ever consider doing that.
It’s long past time America withdrew from NATO, brought the boys home and took the kid gloves off in dealing with Europe wrt to trade. The globalists will scream that this will mean we won’t be able to constantly meddle in other countries’ business. Good! We don’t need to. Our one big weakness was oil and gas and thanks to technological advances, that weakness gets smaller and smaller as our own production steadily rises.
It’s time for the Yurps to grow up or pay the price for their failure to do so.
“Then why stay in?”
We, unfortunately, have created a lot of commitments to countries all over. The main one being used in the media right now is Israel. Everyone is so ready for us to back out and let all the freeloaders fend for themselves. This will create havoc and panic as they can’t. Then someone will emerge with a plan to save them like Hitler and Mussolini and all the czars of Russia like Lenin and Stalin, and areas that seem to be in good shape like China, Japan, and our, so called, western allies. But all, in their great successes, have failed miserably. World War II was the result of this. Germany and Italy tried to expand their borders to profit. Japan in the Pacific did the same. But they underestimated the allies that included the US, or was the US, and they were decimated and lowered to a third world country as we define it today.
But that war had to be fought because we were brought into it and were part of causing it. Pulling out now, will cause another one. Over a million US military members, alone, were killed or wounded in WW II. Korea tallied thirty-five plus thousand deaths. And the count continues when we were forced to go into such places since like, The Lebanon Crisis in 1958, the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961 and 62, the Dominican Republic in 1965, the US Liberty incident in 1967, Iran and El Salvador in 1980, Beirut in 1982, Granada in 1982, Libya bombing in 1986, Persian Gulf escorts in 1987, Invasion of Panama in 1989, the Gulf War, Haiti, Columbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq again, Inherent Resolve, Yemen…….and this is not all the list. And these all had the same three facts, they were not on our soil, they put US citizens in peril, and they caused the deaths of US military members. So, as you can see, we can’t pull out. If we do, all these things can happen again. And most probably will. Our species is just smart enough to recognize the problem, but not enough to stop it.
rwood
They’re not smart enough to pay the paltry 2%. I guarantee it. They will have a hissy fit and do anything but that. We need to call them on it by withdrawing.
Maybe what is needed it a re-evaluation of our interests and operations?
U.S. pays 22% of the NATO budget. As is the case with the United Nations the U.S. contributes more than one-fifth of the direct, collective funding that keeps NATO’s military and civilian operations on track.
If we pull out then not only do we save the 22% of the budget we've been paying but also the cost of the troops that we will no longer need to defend Europe.
One which, hopefully, we won't be brought into and which we won't cause.
Maybe what is needed it a re-evaluation of our interests and operations?
***************
I agree with you. I just answered a couple of questions you posed as objectively as I could. While there are myriad reasons to remain in NATO, my personal opinion is that we need to broadly reassess the level of our various commitments. NATO has been dodging its responsibilities and refusing to pay its fair share for many decades (going back to at least the early 1970’s). Our response now should be to reduce our participation and support if the other member countries won’t do more in the way of burden sharing.
NATO = Not Accepting Their Obligations
Good One!
You’ve given all the old reasons for staying in, and I appreciate the effort you took to respond. But that was then, this is now. If Trump has shown anything it’s that he believes that being involved in international agreements like TPP, NAFTA and the Paris Accords, and in foreign alliances like NATO, are not in our best interest. The U.S. operates best, in his view, when they operate alone without being responsible for other countries or hampered by group agreements. His disgust with NATO is clear and that isn’t going to change. So far today he’s given a number of reasons why we should leave and not a single reason why we should stay. I believe that the President thinks that it’s time to cut the NATO cord as well, and I can’t understand why he isn’t taking this opportunity to do so.
I have never understood why they let Turkey join NATO in the first place. How did THAT happen?
We can protect ourselves... they can do the same.
Effing ingrates.
Yes, we are involved in numerous agreements and alliances (such as the ones you point out) that not as reciprocal or beneficial to the U.S. as they could be. Politically, it will be difficult for Trump to cut back on them. As an example, the senate just voted 97-2 on a motion to re-endorse NATO.
The Senate didn't elect Trump president; the populace did. And there is no reason to believe that pulling out of NATO will upset his base any more than pulling out of the other agreements did. None of them, as you said, were reciprocal.
Don’t you mean Nikki Haley?
Nikki Haley is UN ambassador. KBH is NATO ambassador.
You are right. Thanks.
Totally agree.
Great analogy, but I rather just kick them out than for them to pay up.
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