Yes he really did this and while it’s a stupid stunt I’m not really up on what exactly our obligations are with respect to NATO and the other members toward us. It does seem however that their military expenditures are much smaller percentage-wise than ours. Is the arrangement that the US has with NATO for protection fair to the US financially?
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Your cite doesn’t mention the $300 billion bill, but this article from The Sunday Times does.
I am so glad that he’s leading the country and representing it in talks with other world leaders.
If the US thinks it is unfair, perhaps the US should reduce its military spending and close down the bases on other NATO countries. In fact, wasn’t that one of Trump’s campaign promises? (At least the part about pulling out from some foreign countries)
Funding burdens for NATO are probably somewhat unfair to the U.S. There are two aspects here.
First. there are the direct operating costs for NATO. Those costs are split among the nations based on GDP size; richer nations pay a larger percentage. Those cost burdens are probably pretty fair, the U.S. pays about 22% of those costs while Germany pays about 15%.
The issue is with the indirect costs; nations are supposed to target 2% of GDP for military spending so there is sizable force available to conduct operations. The U.S. loves its military spending and comes in at 3.6% of U.S. GDP. Germany doesn’t, and comes in at 1.2% of German GDP. Many other nations come in at less than 2% GDP as well. This usually means that in NATO operations, the U.S. tends to be supplying a disproportionate chunk of the firepower.
That said, it’s not as though each nation is contributing a strict percentage of their military directly towards NATO. Pretty childish of Trump to be handing Merkel a bill; both the U.S. and Germany use their militaries for plenty of other things besides NATO missions.
It’s quite short. There is nothing in the actual treaty that sets out our various financial obligation. I’m going to quote the main paragraphs.
There is nothing there that says the other Treaty Members will pay protection money directly to the United States.
The Treaty specifically says that we will all develop our defesne with “mutual aid”.
All of the current NATO Treaty members are in good standing.
5. This idea that Treaty Members should spend 2% of their GDP towards their military defense was spelled out in a 2014 NATO Summit in Wales.
Here’s the relevant text:
As you can see, all members who are not currently spending at 2% of their GDP have until 2024 before they are officially not in compliance.
In short - Trump’s assertion that the other NATO members owe the US any amount of money is precisely the sort of emanation one would expect from a man of who has daily proven himself to be a Shit-Godzilla.
Any Dopers who seriously present the idea that NATO members owe us money should spontaneously melt into a pool of embarrassed flop sweat.
The way NATO works is that the U.S. provides the weapons, and Europe provides the battlefield.
The U.S. got the better end of the deal.
As I posted in the Pit Thread, all sources point to the one article in The Times. It’s not being reported by either the NYT or the Washington Post, which seems odd. While I wouldn’t put it past Trump to do something stupid like this, I think it would behoove us to see more than one news site reporting this. And note that even that news site is quoting “unnamed sources”.
I read an article in Reuters recently apparently how Germany for the past decade has knowingly been scaling back military spending to the point it’s actually effecting joint US-Germany operations to the Americans disadvantage and this was a sore point for Obama as well.
Did she get the back-rub,too?
So ignoring how Trump has allegedly tried to conduct this bit of international diplomacy, there genuinely is a problem here. Either the U.S. is spending far too much on defense relative to the dangers in today’s world, or Germany isn’t paying it’s fair share. If the Russians did get around to invading, it would be Germany that lost territory, not the United States.
Given the U.S. is such a key member of NATO, it doesn’t sound unreasonable to me for the U.S. to threaten to kick nations out who are not paying their dues. I personally think the world would be a safer place with less NATO members, because each one is a potential Casus belli for another World War.
It would be a shame if Russia took back Estonia, but is it really worth nuclear armageddon over it? Unlike WW2, there’s no takebacks. Appeasement may be the only alternative to a radioactive wasteland of most of civilization.
Just in case anybody cares, I don’t believe this a bit. Trump would’ve crowed about this had it actually occurred
The US funds NATO for a very simple reason: We’d rather shoot up Europe that our own country.
We saw what WWI and WWII did to Europe and decided that 'Um, we kinda like doing the fighting over there, and not here".
East v West Germany meant that Germany would be the flash point - and we’d much rather nuke it than get NY or DC nuked.
Altruism had nothing to do with it.
The problem with this kind of reasoning is that there is no stopping point. Appease Russia for Estonia? Might as well let them have Germany…and France…and Brazil…and Connecticut. If the only alternative is a radioactive wasteland, then we pretty much have to kiss the new overlord’s arse and let him conquer.
Deterrence works only if we say, and mean it, yes, we will destroy the entire world’s civilization if you step over that line.
And so, yes, Estonia is exactly worth it.
If we just concentrate on the 21st century realities, Putin can’t afford the sanctions.
What is with the picking on Estonia? Estonia is actually one of the members of NATO that does meet its 2% GDP target on military, and yet I keep hearing people act like they’re a freeloader that should be thrown under the bus. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard Estonia singled out, for…no apparent reason that I can think of.
Estonia has been meeting the 2% target for several years now.
I think it’s just that Estonia is one of the more unnervingly plausible places where an open conflict between NATO and Russia–potentially escalating to nuclear war–could actually break out. Estonia has a border with Russia, and a large population of Russian-speakers (courtesy of Soviet colonialism) many of whom are (partly due to Estonia’s own citizenship polices) disaffected from their country of residence. Ida-Viru County is right on the Russian border, very close to Saint Petersburg (second largest Russian city, a major port, and of massive historical importance)…and the population of Ida-Viru County is over 70% Russian-speaking.
And, despite the fact that the Estonians are meeting their defense spending target, realistically speaking they could probably spend 100% of their GDP on defense and still not be much more than a speed bump for Russia–Russia has over 100 times Estonia’s population, and nearly 100 times Estonia’s GDP, not to mention nukes. So, without NATO, Estonia (along with Latvia and Lithuania) is pretty well fucked. It’s hard not to think that if Estonia weren’t in NATO, a bunch of mysteriously-well-armed “local militias” would have already sprung up in Ida-Viru County to demand “reunification with the motherland”, Crimea-style. Putin wouldn’t necessarily stop there, either; at the very least, what was left of Estonia (and the other Baltic States) would be firmly in Russia’s “sphere of influence”.
And, even with Estonia in NATO, with the Tweeter-in-Chief running off at the mouth* [del]in the White House[/del] at Mar-a-Lago, that could happen anyway. Which could be very, very bad. Big-ly bad, even.
I’m assuming Trump is probably just a “useful idiot” here, and that he’s not actually on the scrambler phone every night getting new instructions from Moscow Center. Though these days nothing would really surprise me any more.
I think it’s that it doesn’t seem like a “real” NATO member to some Westerners. It has a large Russian minority after a history of Russian colonization. It’s part of the Russian “Near Abroad,” and some Westerners want to throw it back to Russia’s sphere of influence as a concession.
I think the Baltic States should be clearly on the NATO side of the line. Russia is an autocracy now, and it has a large enough sphere as it is.
It’s arbitrary, and if modern day Russia tries to invade Turkey or Germany, they would have significant difficulties other than merely nuclear weapons. Estonia is a fight they could win, and it’s right on the border.
By your logic, if someone spits in your hair at the bar, you have to respond in a hail of bullets (and they have a gun and friend with guns, so you are not getting out of this unhurt even though you have slightly more friends). You have to put the line in the sand right there. You can’t make it "well, if they come to my house or my immediate relatives house, *that’s *the line we care about.
WW1 started from a similarly fragile alliance, teetering on the brink, and all parties got sucked in over a matter than most of the alliance didn’t care about. I don’t see how setting up Estonia - right on the Russian border - as the trigger for WW3, when WW3 will kill most of us, is at all wise.
No. Taking over a country that is not yours is the line, and it’s the line for a good reason. It means you’ve become a threat to everyone.
You talk about WWI, but you miss that WWII started because we tried to appease an expansionist Germany.
If you don’t protect one member, then other members are at risk. Trying to act like a country taking over another country is a “sneeze” is silly.
Plus, don’t forget. Russia also loses if we destroy the world. That’s the point of the the deterrent. We can’t trust the Evil to do what’s right, so we threaten their own wellbeing.