Cont: The Trump Presidency VIII

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Captain_Swoop said:
Trump Tweeted

"I had a great meeting with NATO. They have paid $33 Billion more and will pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars more in the future, only because of me. NATO was weak, but now it is strong again (bad for Russia). The media only says I was rude to leaders, never mentions the money!"
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I'd like to see some evidence of this - not least because it isn't clear about whether he's talking about defence spending or NATO contributions.
 
Trump can fix NATO with a single meeting.
Too bad Russia relations were at their lowest ever since Trump'S previous meeting with Putin - if only he had fixed relations back then.
 
The Don said:
I'd like to see some evidence of this - not least because it isn't clear about whether he's talking about defence spending or NATO contributions.
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He is talking about defense spending where contribution is supposed to be at least 2%.
image-1.1531243151004.png
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Sherkeu said:
He is talking about defense spending where contribution is supposed to be at least 2%.
[qimg]https://altnewsmedia.net/wp-content/uploads/image-1.1531243151004.png[/qimg].
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A country's defense spending as a percentage of their GDP is not the same thing as the country's contributions to NATO.

This is why The Don asked the question he did.

Here's a brief article that helps explain the difference.

ETA. I'd love to see some sort of breakdown of U.S. defense spending that indicates what portion of it would be directly applicable to NATO as opposed to U.S. interests in other parts of the world.

Most of it would be tough to separate, but some things, like bases in the Pacific, etc., would have little to do with NATO and might take a significant chunk out of that 3.50% that gets touted about so much.
 
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Sherkeu said:
He is talking about defense spending where contribution is supposed to be at least 2%.
[qimg]https://altnewsmedia.net/wp-content/uploads/image-1.1531243151004.png[/qimg].
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Just upping defence spending doesn't necessarily help NATO. President Trump makes it sound that he personally caused other countries to pay 30 billion more to NATO, that's utter rubbish.
 
Sherkeu said:
He is talking about defense spending where contribution is supposed to be at least 2%.
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In 2024. It is not supposed to be at least 2% now. The agreement specifically said to grow defense spending so that it will reach the target of 2% of GDP by 2024.

It is entirely dishonest to leave out that timeline and pretend that any NATO member is doing anything wrong right now. Nearly every country currently under 2% on that chart has in fact been raising spending over the past 4 years.
 
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The Don said:
Just upping defence spending doesn't necessarily help NATO. President Trump makes it sound that he personally caused other countries to pay 30 billion more to NATO, that's utter rubbish.
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I agree. The 2% is such a simplistic metric that doesnt spell out capability and readiness to defend the allies in NATO specifically.

They did meet in 2014 and agreed again to move toward the 2% when they had a chance to change it. (That was in response to Russia's move in Crimea and Ukraine).

However, I imagine the US total spend (not the % GDP) in the European area is going to still be much larger than all the other countries combined.
 
Sherkeu said:
He is talking about defense spending where contribution is supposed to be at least 2%.
[qimg]https://altnewsmedia.net/wp-content/uploads/image-1.1531243151004.png[/qimg].
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IMV, this points out not that these other countries are spending too little, but we are spending far too much. The real question should be why should they increase their military spending so much? What is the threat? Or maybe there is another reason Trump wants them and us to spend more?
 
The Don said:
Just upping defence spending doesn't necessarily help NATO. President Trump makes it sound that he personally caused other countries to pay 30 billion more to NATO, that's utter rubbish.
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Hey I think they see how chummy he is with Vlad and suddenly want a lot more military for themselves.
 
The EU and Japan have just signed a trade agreement that creates the world’s largest free trade zone.

Right after doing so they attacked Trump on his trade policies.

"We are sending a clear message that we stand together against protectionism."
 
Trump is now claiming he misspoke or was misquoted. When he said "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia," he meant "wouldn't." Gee, that makes everything ok, right? And we all believe him, right?
 
Sherkeu said:
I agree. The 2% is such a simplistic metric that doesnt spell out capability and readiness to defend the allies in NATO specifically.

They did meet in 2014 and agreed again to move toward the 2% when they had a chance to change it. (That was in response to Russia's move in Crimea and Ukraine).

However, I imagine the US total spend (not the % GDP) in the European area is going to still be much larger than all the other countries combined.
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IMO it's a balance of the US spending so much more, but having so many more global commitments. IMO it depends on how you account for global programs and domestic programs. 100% Poland's spend is NATO focused, most of UK and France.
 
Minoosh said:
....Apparently they did have substantive talks about Ukraine and Syria - Putin was able to rattle off all the topics touched on from memory, and I'm not sure Trump was absorbing any of that. Notice that Putin took notes - Trump just showed up, improvised and probably has already forgotten anything that wasn't explicitly about him.....
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What are you basing the bolded on?
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
Isn't that all but saying "well, Russia did interfere in the election but that was a whole 2 years ago, so why should anybody care?"
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So very few (as in none) people on MSNBC and CNN are stating the most obvious.

They'll say maybe Putin has something on Trump. But I haven't heard any of them say maybe he did it, cheated on the election.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
What are you basing the bolded on?
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After the meeting, Putin was seen being interviewed for Russian TV. He delivered a focused, cogent summary of everything that had taken place - largely things that did not even come up in the Trump-Putin press conference. Things like forming an alliance to push Iran out of Syria and other substantive geopolitical proposals. Don't know if it was all true, but the point is that he was able to remember, present his position cogently and just in general come across as a very competent leader of state. He thinks in bullet points and is quite an effective communicator/propagandist.

I don't remember where I saw this. It came from a panelist yesterday, but I don't remember if it was Fox or CNN ... most likely is Fox Business, based on when I saw it.
 
From now on I will treat every member of the GOP as a supporter of TReason, unless he proves otherwise.
 
quadraginta said:
Most of it would be tough to separate, but some things, like bases in the Pacific, etc., would have little to do with NATO and might take a significant chunk out of that 3.50% that gets touted about so much.
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Is that necessarily bad though?

Trump’s NATO-bashing surprised no one. He has repeatedly suggested the United States’ postwar security architecture is a “bad deal,” one negotiated by weak and foolish “incompetents.” Foreign policy, in his view, is a zero-sum game; any benefit to another nation must of necessity be a loss for the United States. “NATO countries,” he declared on Twitter, “must pay MORE, the United States must pay LESS. Very Unfair!”

Unfair? A world that revolves around American military, economic and cultural power, and uses the U.S. dollar as its reserve currency?

What Trump fails to understand is that the disparity in spending, with the U.S. paying more than its allies, is not a bug of the system. It is a feature. This is how the great postwar statesmen designed it, and this immensely foresighted strategy has ensured the absence of great power conflict—and nuclear war—for three-quarters of a century.

The open, liberal world order we know today was built in the wake of World War II and expanded after the collapse of the Soviet Union. By design, it is led by the United States; by design, it ensures permanent U.S. military hegemony over Eurasia while uniting Europe under the U.S.’ protection. The goal of this American grand strategy is to prevent any single power from dominating the region and turning on the United States and its allies. American hegemony serves, too, to quell previously intractable regional rivalries, preventing further world wars. Dean Acheson, George Marshall and the other great statesmen of their generation pursued this strategy because they had learned, at unimaginable cost, that the eternal American fantasy of forever being free of Europe—isolationism, or America Firstism, in other words—was just that: a fantasy. Four hundred thousand American men lost their lives in the European theaters of the First and Second World Wars. (American fatalities in all of the other 20th-century conflicts—including Vietnam, Korea and the Persian Gulf—do not total one-quarter of that number.) Our postwar statesmen were neither weak nor incompetent. They were the architects of the greatest foreign policy triumph in U.S. history.

...

In recognizing this history of blood, however, we must recognize something equally true: In the wake of World War II, liberal democracy saw its fullest realization in the West. This flourishing of peace and human rights cannot be explained by a sudden outbreak of European pacifism. (Consider the 1956 Suez expedition, crushed by an infuriated President Dwight Eisenhower; or the 1954-62 Franco-Algerian War.) It happened because during World War II, Europe destroyed itself, leaving the United States overwhelmingly powerful by comparison, its only rival the Soviet Union. Through the application of economic, diplomatic and military force majeure, the United States suppressed Europe’s internal security competition. This is why postwar Europe ceased to be the world’s leading exporter of violence and became, instead, the world’s leading exporter of luxury sedans.

Only America, and massive power as the U.S. exercised it, could have pacified and unified Europe under its aegis. No other continental country possessed half the world’s GDP. No other country had enough distance from Europe to be trusted, to a large extent, by all parties and indifferent to its regional jealousies. No other country had a strategic, moral and economic vision for Europe that its inhabitants could be persuaded gladly to share.
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/15/trump-nato-europe-history-dependence-219011

Trump sees Americas hegemony over Europe as some kind of weakness. The benefit of not just defending western Europe from falling to the Soviet Union but continuing to dominate militarily and diplomatically in Europe after the cold war outweigh the costs.

As I've said before: If Americas hegemony were to weaken significantly then something else would fill the void and it's quite likely to cause significant harm directly and indirectly against America and Americans at some point.
 
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Bob001 said:
Trump is now claiming he misspoke or was misquoted. When he said "I don't see any reason why it would be Russia," he meant "wouldn't." Gee, that makes everything ok, right? And we all believe him, right?
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I sure hope he says he was misquoted, because that exchange was aired dozens of times on different panel shows, and it's exactly what Trump said.

The (paraphrase) "I have confidence in my intelligence agencies BUT" moment.

The but heard round the world. By correcting himself, he's giving news outlets a great excuse to run the clip over and over again.

I can't watch, I have a hangover from yesterday's coverage.
 
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