On Thursday, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg agreed to push NATO members to increase their military spending.
NATO wants its members to dedicate 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to military spending, a goal the alliance has been struggling to meet. According to a March report issued by Stoltenberg, in 2021, only eight out of 30 alliance members reached that goal.
“We need to make sure that we continue to ensure that NATO allies are investing more,” Stoltenberg said. “Across Europe and Canada, we have seen now seven consecutive years of increased defense spending and more and more allies are meeting the 2% guideline.”
Austin stressed that the 2% guideline was only the minimum spending that the US would like to see. “Let me just say that spending 2% of GDP is a floor and not a ceiling,” he said.
The US remains by far the largest contributor to NATO. According to Stoltenberg’s March report, the US accounts for 51% of NATO’s combined GDP and 69% of combined military expenditure. In 2021, the US spent about 3.5% of its GDP on its military.
On Friday, Germany’s lower house of parliament approved a plan to boost military spending by $107 billion over the next five years. The funding will increase Germany’s military expenditure to about 2% of its GDP but as a multi-year average.
Turning plowshares into swords — which is so great for the forgers as the swords are banged up, broken and need to be replaced over and over and over…
Just what we need.
The sanctions were supposed to weaken Russia to the point that they could no longer finance the war. But Austin is telegraphing his own urgency to get more financing. Hmm.
Gotta feel sorry for all those military industrialists on welfare.
Millions homeless, rampant mental disease, a million dead citizens from Covid due to rampant diabetes and obesity, bridges falling, communities going dark with electricity grid failures, political gridlock and rampant unprecedented attempts to censor speech … but, yes, what we really need is more useless weapons because Russia is such a scary adversary.
They are a scary adversary. Have you not seen what they are doing in Ukraine? Add the nuclear threats they have made. They attack Ukraine because they wanted to join NATO so under that analogy, Finland is next.
And since you are so Pro Putin, dont worry about russian taxpayer’s money being dumped in Ukraine.
“They attack Ukraine because they wanted to join NATO so under that analogy, Finland is next.”
But it’s your analogy so there is that. And weren’t you claiming earlier that Ukraine was kicking that scary adversary’s ass all over the place?
Under his analogy, the best defense would have been disbanding NATO, thus no Russian attack. Hey, maybe Dons right for once …
Because disbanding NATO would guarantee Russia doesn’t attack any of its neighbors, yeah right.
They actually are based on the battle damage assessments which is embarrassing given the unfair advantage Russia has. Russia has no shortage of cannon fodders and Russians cannot protest against Putin so it presents a real challenge.
Scary or inept? You can’t seem to make up your mind. You argue in favor of “more useless weapons” because Russia is such a scary adversary and then you say how inept they are since they can’t subdue Ukraine even with their “unfair advantage”.
I dont need to make up my mind. This inept army is causing a lot damage to the population and county’s infrastructure, i.e. shooting unguided munitions into cities. Their ineptitude makes them scary. They dont play by the rules and consider Ukrainians as animals.
Shooting unguided munitions into cities and thinking Ukrainians to be animals, even if true, doesn’t make them scary to anyone outside of their region. So, NATO countries getting to 2% because Russia is such a “scary adversary” is unnecessary and useless, as Caliman alluded to. That was the “scary” you were replying to so the additional MSM tidbits doesn’t make them any scarier.
Your cherry picked scary topic just got dumb. Not my problem you cannot get my point, genius.
What exactly was your point? That Russia is a scary adversary so the world has to arm itself to the teeth(NATO spending)or Russia is a scary adversary because they’re “shooting unguided munitions” and they consider Ukrainians “animals”? And this after saying Russia is getting their a$$ handed to them based on “battle damage assessments”. Your “point” is all over the map and changes like the weather.
Firstly, I care about my country, not Putin. Russia’s citizens get to care about him.
But yes, what is the great Russian war machine doing in Ukraine? It is proving to the world that offensive war against even a minimally coherent nation state is a worthless and pointless endeavor. The weapons we already have are far far more than enough to deter any possible attack against us, not that anyone event wants to.
I don’t get it, the whole point of spending the 40 billion was to f Russia up for a generation or two. If that is successful we can reduce our military spending.
If Russia is f-ed up for a generation or two, the US military-industrial complex will simply announce a NEW monster hiding under the bed that requires increased military spending.
Better yet: save a huge pile of money and lives by getting rid of NATO, and firing Austen and Stoltenberg and their ilk.
i keep blocking the commenter Don Julio and yet every day i see his punk-ass comments right here again.
WTF Disqus ?
the U.S. is the world’s bullet store
Since “we” are the largest ‘contributor’, I think it deserves some acknowledgement… I think all of NATO’s missiles should be decorated in red, white and blue and be musically accompanied, with the Star Spangled Banner upon firing… Joking…!