Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first appearance at a NATO meeting today, loudly denouncing “Russian aggression” and pushing for NATO members to dramatically increase their military spending, rewarded with applause from NATO members as he pledged US support for NATO, and laid out an anti-Russia stance.
British Defense Secretary Michael Fallon and US Defense Secretary James Mattis both played up the idea of NATO needing to greatly increase spending, saying that all member nations need to meet the 2% annual GDP spending, and that they must all commit to increases in “real terms” year over year.
Most of NATO doesn’t spend anywhere near 2% of their GDP on the military, and most have no real need to, given that they aren’t engaged in massive overseas wars and don’t have enemies on their borders. Germany has been very clear about not wanting to waste that much on military spending.
Tillerson’s comments played up the need for all of NATO to commit to “stability” in the Middle East, and to be ready to fight against “Russian aggression,” which is always a popular among NATO nations in calls for spending increases, but doesn’t appear likely to get many to put up the 2% annually.
I find this utterly confusing. Europeans spending more to counter Russian aggression so that we can spend less on Russian aggression? Or that we and the Europeans pay fair shares to counter Russian aggression? My head spins.
“… the need for all of NATO to commit to “stability” in the Middle East, …” what? Has our policy in the ME changed, now?
Might as well give it a whirl since we’ve certainly tried everything else.
This kind of boss attitude and belligerence only serves to crumble the NATO alliance. The French and Italians are literally “this close” to leaving NATO, let the Brits and Americans fight Russia if they want WW3.
It’s not likely you’ll hear much more about it. You can’t expect Trump to drop it completely when it’s a major part of how he conned in some of his supporters on the money issue.
That was before Trump had any idea on the truth of Nato being a US tool for further aggression and not having anything to do with the US/Nato protecting Nato member countries from Russia.