Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnR
Spence, European NATO members, excepting the UK, have not met their baselines for over 20 years. Only a couple nations in the past year or two have hit the 2% baseline.
If OBama was so magical he would have been able to get Europe to manage their own defense spending to meet minimum safe levels eight years ago. This mostly benefits Europe. Europe is strong enough and wealthy enough to meet THEIR obligations for their own defense.
But this is has been a serious topic of people in Diplo/Security for a decade plus - you probably know that - and it came LONG before Trump.
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But - and you probably know this - that members have been paying more in recent years and most have reasonable plans to meet their goals. The 2% number is a stake in the ground anyway, I've read some concern that NATO at full 2%+ could lead to over-militarization of Europe.
What's more worrisome is that Trump doesn't seem to understand 1) how NATO even works and 2) why it's important. The money issues is really meaningless to him, he just wants to be disruptive because he doesn't believe in multi-lateral institutions.