Err... a cabal of public school yobs who treated government like their private playground over the recent past? BoJo and Truss the absolute worst of them?
So your point is when the US does it it's okay, but when Europe does it it isn't. Right, got you.
It never existed. The Tories entered policy commitments without funding them, then further tanked the economy when the economists looked at their spending plans and asked where the Lettuce's new coat actually was.
When an alliance requires a certain level of spending and members have not been meeting that spending level, why should the alliance protect those that aren't doing their part?
Diplomacy in Europe has long been under the Mobster model.
Ah, you do understand that only works if you have the production lines, workforces and supply chains sitting idly by doing nothing?
It's a target, not a mandate. Semantics are important, specifically:
How well do you expect that to go down? Even if that's what happens, and everyone agrees, Trump, and by extension the US, will be looked on with contempt. No one likes a bully.
This is going to sound harsh to your ears, and it's certainly not directed at you in particular or anyone else here, but ...
Relying on Russian natural gas certainly was a grave mistake caused by greedy financial markets rater than prudent strategic considerations.
It *pretty much* is. Someone with basic decency wouldn't exploit the opportunity to reap benefits for themselves at the expense of others. We wouldn't have Darleen Druyun if people know and follow their task and don't try being terrible.
Plenty engaged in corruption without breaking the law. The Western-aligned calls it "lobbying" but when the rest of the world try they get the corruption placard.
Well I have no idea what this is about. You could try being clearer.
US GDP: 27.36 trillion USD (2023)
Accurate.
I don't know why you're repeating this, I thought meeting the mandated spending threshold was always a NATO rule?
Except that for spending to be effective, deficit must be minimal. Corruption, in all of its forms, is a major cause of deficit.
www.lemonde.fr
Unresponsive. At best it suggests that Trump thinks that the delinquent members of NATO should pay the US for US carrying the spending in the past, not that NATO membership means dues paid to the US.Why did Donald Trump accuse NATO members of not paying?
The former US president has created confusion between direct NATO funding and allies' military spending, which is supposed to represent at least 2% of their GDP.
The issue then being that that will be a major money pit for very little in return. You'd have to design your entire military around conscription (i.e. like Finland and Sweden) and there has to be the willpower to do so, and neither of those things is present in Western Europe. Arguably, what nations like the UK, the Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy should be focusing on is naval and air power, whilst making their armies more deployable.
If our European partners are so heavily concerned about this, why aren't they spending adequate money on defending themselves against this possibility? Is it because they know it's historically been underwritten by US taxpayers so don't actually care to spend their own money? Or are they not genuinely concerned?
Such things take time to set up. The money was sent to the companies in 2022, but it takes time to rebuild capacity to necessary levels. I saw predictions back in 2022 saying that we wouldn't see the actual results until 2024 and they were correct. I also don't see a conclusion to this conflict any time soon, especially a lasting one.
35 years of complacency, which should have ended in 2014. Note, this applies to the entire West, including the US. Frankly I'm aghast budgets didn't skyrocket, and by that I mean to greater than Cold War levels in order to rearm with a future drop to Cold War levels after rearmament, after the invasion of Ukraine, especially with the threat of Trump being reelected, like he has been.
They are spending - if you look at the graph I posted back at Reply #53, you will see that the Baltic states are running at around ~3% of GDP. The reality for all nations though (not just the European ones, is that the cost of living pressures have put most democratic governments in a classic "guns vs butter" situation whereby they are under a lost of pressure to also spend on non-Defence related aspects.
