Being the world police is expensive. Just think how expensive all those Iraqi 2.0 vets are costing the US taxpayer.... then on top of all the other veterans from previous wars. Interesting how the US uses “percentage of GDP” as a measurement.... which would make NATO and Japan seem like dead beats since it looks at total military expenses.
Article 5 of NATO states that an attack against one Ally is considered as an attack against all Allies. In the entire history of the NATO alliance, do you know how many times article 5 was invoked? Once, and it was the United States that called upon other nations to help fight our war. Do you know how many British, Canadian, German, French and Italian service members died for our war? Do you know what base I was medivaced in when shrapnel from a DFC shredded by right side, mostly my leg? Camp Bastion. The British Army commands Camp Bastion. British Army doctors and staff saved my leg by performing a fasciotomy. So I don't really see them as bums from my experience.
I commend your service but your story about how NATO forces helped you out isn’t very helpful to a larger geo-political discussion. Feels like you’re trying to find offense for the sake of it. They don’t do nothing but the financial burden falls disproportionately on the American people to foot the bill for the Western Worlds defence. Everyone else cheaps out on defense spending knowing papa United States will take care of everything. And we do, like suckers. Every dollar we put into defending the Western World is a dollar those countries can use on social services we can’t. I’m tired of that sh**.
And you are also naive to think that NATO nations spending a larger portion of their GDP on their military will somehow allow Congress and the administration to attempt to lower the Defense budget. Remember Trump was bragging about NATO nation increasing their spending and then he follows it up by bragging about increasing the defense budget and making fun of Obama for not increasing it enough. Lobbying from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin etc are not going to allow any decrease in defense spending. In fact the notion of a decrease in defense spending is so taboo in our payed off Congress that even suggesting to decrease the RATE at which the defense budget should increase is stigmatized as that is what the Obama administration did. So if fiscal responsibility concerns are not the issue here because given the context of the past two years, that obviously isn't the intent of NATO nations "paying their fair share", then the only other concern is sharing the burden of sacrificing each respective nation's servicemembers. In that score card, it's the US that hasn't payed it's dues as no other nation in NATO has invoked Article 5. So go please be a giant hypocrite and be offensive to people who sacrificed their lives for abiding by the word of the treaty by calling them bums. Imagine how outraged you would be if someone said that a Holocaust survivor is trying t"find offense for the sake of it" for being offended that someone used the term "concentration camp" for detention centers they felt are treating children deplorably. Your moral outrage has no logical consistency and this post just proved that your outrage about AOC was purely concern trolling and politically motivated.
NATO is full of deabeats. That's a common criticism across Republican and Democratic administrations. The vast majority of member states do not provide enough resources to adequately maintain their military forces. My "deadbeat" criticism was aimed at financial contributions. I thought that was patently obvious. That is not a negative commentary on the NATO members who have fought/died/been injured with us in Afghanistan. No one has ever criticized them or their sacrifice. Only you are twisting the conversation that way. "If we've got a collective defense, it means that everybody's got to chip in, and I've had some concerns about a diminished level of defense spending among some of our partners in NATO," President Barack Obama said in Brussels in 2014. Our biggest NATO allies can't even handle small scale operations on their own: Libya “has not been a very big war. If [the Europeans] would run out of these munitions this early in such a small operation, you have to wonder what kind of war they were planning on fighting,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense think tank. “Maybe they were just planning on using their air force for air shows." https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/nato-runs-short-on-some-munitions-in-libya Where AOC/CC's comes into it is just... totally unhinged.
You didn't address a single part of my response. 1. Show me efforts to decrease the defense budget now that NATO nations have increased their defense spending according to the current administration. 2. Show me another country that invoked Article 5 to fight their wars and have our service members die for their war.
Trump's policy of requiring NATO members to pay up is a continuation of Obama's policy. Trump derangement syndrome is in full effect in this thread.
1. I don't think they have or will but it stands to reason that they should. If our close European allies increase their military capabilities it should allow us to relax ours. However, big government giving out big money has developed a massive military industrial complex that neither party seems very interested in dismantling. 2. I'm sure it doesn't exist. It's also totally irrelevant to the conversation of NATO countries and their financial commitments to their militaries. As if their participation in Afghanistan absolves them from appropriately funding their militaries . Most NATO members are deadbeats relying on the blanket American forces have provided for them for 70+ years now. They've let their militaries rot knowing the U.S. will take care of anything. We're being taken for a ride.
Yeah, Trump really doesn't know how to run a government or any part of a government. He doesn't even know how to distinguish reality, and some people are okay with that.
Sure, but NATO's primary strength is as a deterrent. It has had a manifold return for Europe without ever being invoked. I don't agree with Trump that the US has benefited the least (it has been our primary vehicle of pax Americana and our world hegemony since WWII), but Axelrod's counter-argument is also weak. Can't we just be content to say that it's been a good alliance that has benefited all members?
Curious how Axelrod's example is weak... it seems to be a recent and clear example of the U.S. benefiting from the NATO relationship. I agree there are other reasons the U.S. benefits from NATO and I think we agree that trump is an idiot for wanting to lessen/remove our involvement with NATO (Putin's objective)
This. I understand why anti globalization is en vogue (much easier to complain than adapt) but America has benefitted greatly from these types of arrangements.
After 9/11, we got our friends to help us beat up on some weak Muslim countries who mostly didn't have anything to do with us being attacked in the first place. Before that though, NATO deterred a powerful and overbearing Soviet Union from encroaching on Western Europe for decades. It also likely deterred a hot war between the US and USSR because the US could add the ground game through Europe to its passing game of nuclear, naval, and air superiority. I think it is no contest at all between avenging ourselves on some jihadis and protecting ourselves from the second most powerful country in the world.