President Trump has come out of the NATO summit and his flurry of demands on NATO spending with a claim of total victory. He claimed in the wake of the talks “everyone has agreed” to increase their military spending because of him, putting the figure of the increase at $33 billion.
Trump’s version of events is that he told the alliance he was “extremely unhappy,” and everyone eagerly committed to boost spending beyond 2%. French President Emmanuel Macron denied this, saying the 2024 goal is basically the same as it always was.
Macron went on to dispute media reports that Trump had threatened to withdraw from NATO if he didn’t get his way, reports that Trump did not dispute in his own comments. Macron says Trump never once made an such threats.
Analysts also put serious doubts to Trump’s statement, saying they believe the $33 billion figure the president was touting came from the spending increases already committed to since 2014, not any apparent new spending pledges.
The latest NATO data also threw doubt into Trump’s claims that more countries are now meeting their commitments to spend 2% of GDP on military. The summit declaration did not point to any changes on that front, and it’s still the same five nations that were at 2% before the summit who are the only ones expected to reach it. Trump’s pledge that it will go “quite a bit higher” than 2% also appears untrue, as the NATO report mentioned no such changes in targeting in 2024 or beyond.
Trump went into the summit with everyone expecting him to a pick of fight, and while he absolutely did that, there is no sign it ended with him achieving any of the things he claimed. Rather, officials just seem glad to be done with the event.
Change we can believe in, huh…. Wait, that was the last lying sack of anus who ran this country. So hard to tell them apart. Trump is the orange one, right?
So nothing changed but Trump is a hero, it is hard to watch.
I expect pretty soon the EU will begin decreasing military spending.
The EU should consider a USExit
The people that support Trump will believe him. Facts be damned.
Truth is now faith based
The US deserves trump. Now, if he would just claim victory in Afghanistan, Yemen and all those other places.
Where is the Department of Peace?
All this money spent on armaments is at best wasted
When Russia is decreasing their budget the President is shilling for an arms race.
Instead of leadership we have have a gun merchant squandering the wealth and future of the world for the profit of Grumman and Boeing.
And here I thought Trump was against NATO because it was obsolete.
This emperor has no clothes on either. He demanded an increase to 4% gdp which would be roughly 600 billion dollars. That he will not get.
Even the full increase to 2% of gdp by all NATO countries is at least 100 billion. The amount to be raised by the eight largest economies is about 115 billion as I have estimated from needed percentage raises and 2016 gdp numbers. 33 billion is not trivial but would be an average of 1.6 billion raise for all NATO countries currently below 2% gdp and it was probably planned already anyway. The largest raise of defense budget must come from Germany: some 58 billion of today’s gdp. That increase would make Germany a European military superpower again and who wants that? For Europe and us it is much better that Germany remains an economic locomotive.
Three NATO countries have nuclear arsenals: the USA, Great Britain, and France. Why would other NATO countries contribute to the maintenance of these nuclear arsenals which are arguably much too large? That might be a fine anti-war topic for Justin to analyze and discuss. Will he?
if the NY Times loves what Trump did at the nato meeting, we are all in trouble
– it’s all about funneling more money to the US military-industrial complex, doesn’t have a darn thing to do with security….there would be greater security in the world if the US and Europe were on friendly relations you know with Russia
oh good. Just what the world needed! European countries buying more weapons. Gopd work
Nothing changed from the original 2014 plan.
Combover Caligula strikes again…
*dramatic voice* Tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode!!
Meanwhile, taxes have to be paid, bombs dropped, etc, etc…back to work, wage slave!!