Shoving the Prime Minister of Montenegro out of the way before striking a dramatic pose, President Trump’s expected “toughness” toward NATO during the Brussels summit turned into downright belligerence, taking the usual surly American speech about other NATO nations not having such recklessly large miliitaries to excess.
Trump insisted it was “not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States” that NATO doesn’t spend way more on their militaries, insisting that only with complete contributions from the entire alliance would NATO ever be strong enough to handle the threat of terrorism.
Trump not only demanded that the NATO nations all get up to that artificial 2% spending goal that the US has been harping on for years, as if it was an actual requirement, but also insisted that NATO nations must “pay” the United States the difference from past years, which again is obviously not a requirement.
Perhaps more glaringly from the perspective of NATO members, however, Trump appeared to condition US military support for NATO on getting that money, when asked about mutual defense within the alliance, he insisted he would defend those who “fulfill their obligations to us.” White House officials were quick to back away from this.
This was Trump’s first direct speech to NATO, an organization he has conceded in the past he doesn’t really know much about.what NATO was, and complained NATO doesn’t fight terrorism because “back when they did NATO there was no such thing as terrorism.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had promised Trump would be “tough” with NATO, and he certainly delivered on that, but to what end is anyone’s guess, as much of his diplomacy so far has been to demand money from people who don’t owe it, condemn past diplomatic efforts as failures, and brag about how tough and decisive he believes himself to be.
The non-military US exporters to Europe must be aghast.
NATO is the worst possible organization to fight terrorism. The recent Israel blunder by Trump demonstrates what is effective: infiltration. Infiltration is not done with Abram tanks and F35 jet fighters. Our president is the world’s greatest ignoramus. Why does he continue to give these way over-the-top speeches? To show that he is tougher than Obama?
The time has come for antiwar.com to denounce president Trump as a war hawk. The time to construct excuses such a “Deep State” or “Establishment” are long past.
“The time has come for antiwar.com to denounce president Trump as a war hawk.”
With the exception of a single unhinged writer, that’s what we’ve been doing for a year and change now.
Whom would this single unhinged writer be?
More jingoistic dick wagging from the jingoist dick-wagger-in-chief.
Better idea. The US should drop out of NATO, bring home our troops stationed in Europe and all military equipment. That way, NATO can start their own wars, and fight their own wars, and do it with their own money. America needs a break from bloodletting!
“America needs a break from bloodletting!”
In order to do that we’d first need to take all monetary incentives out of “bloodletting” and then we’d need to replace 99% of Congress, 99% of the senior military leadership, most of the State Department and intelligence agencies (all 17 of them) leadership, and everyone who moved into the WH on January 20th.
I’m not usually a negative person, but I’m not seeing any of these things happening in my lifetime.
Maybe that is what Trump hopes to accomplish by insisting every body pay up and even pay up for years past . If they don’t Trump should take United States out of the criminal club . Trump has a tough time going against NATO because the United States news media and every body has been writting propaganda saying what a wonderful organization NATO is for the last 70 years .There once was maybe a need for NATO defense when the communists wanted to use force to take over the world .But now days NATO wants to use force to take over the world for the NWO . NATO has changed from a mutually defensive organization to a NWO offensive organization issuing orders to every one .
Telling the truth about what NATO has done is going over about as good as trying to tell every one mother Terasa was a prostitute . NO One believes Trump accept maybe Putin . But if you closely what the North American terrorist organization has accomplished the last 25 years you have to agree with me .