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Hi all,
If anyone finds better information - please tell me.
America spent only $567 million on NATO in 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-annual-budget-not-two-thirds-2024-05-31/
Part of the deal as understood and promoted by all previous Presidents before Trump was that the EU did NOT need to harmonise and form their own European Army.
Why not? It's a great idea! Rather than 178 chaotic, different, bespoke weapons platforms from 27 different national commands - they could have one EU command streamlining and mass producing something like 30 co-ordinated weapons platforms as America does. It would make them vastly more cost effective - giving them literally more ‘bang for their buck.’ The NATO alliance between an EU Army and USA would have been even more formidable!
Question: So why would previous American President’s discourage this?
Answer: Good old fashioned self-interest. Jobs at home!
The EU has recently been spending about €90 bn on military hardware.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/
63% of this is spent in America.
EU buys too much defense equipment abroad, especially from US: Report
That’s €56 bn or converted to USD $60 bn.
Let’s spell it out.
America’s income from this deal = $60,000 million.
America’s annual NATO cost? = $ 567 million.
That means 105 times more income than expense.
America wins.
So can we please drop this Trumpian charade that America is being ripped off by NATO? Financially - it's almost exactly the other way around. Let's also remember - every taxpayer dollar going to an American stationed in Europe to defend NATO is still a tax payer dollar going to an AMERICAN. It's still an American job! In a way it's not leaving the country.
In other words - here is a free $60 bn from Europe - you win!
Remember - the whole point of NATO is not money, but defence. It's about the reputation and reality of being the biggest most successful military alliance in history. The more Trump talks it down, the less effective that reputation and reality are. The more likely it is Putin might advance towards NATO to retake former Soviet nations he wants back. The more chance we have of Putin overstepping - and something really nasty happening to us all!
As the New York Times says:
I edited this OP to correct my original error of saying the EU purchased $190 billion in American weapons each year. This is wrong and I apologise. It is only $60 bn as far as I can tell - and that ramped up in the last year or so. But that is STILL more than 105 times more than America invests in NATO each year!
This time I slow down and show my sources.
If anyone finds better information - please tell me.
America spent only $567 million on NATO in 2023.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/us-contributes-16-nato-annual-budget-not-two-thirds-2024-05-31/
Part of the deal as understood and promoted by all previous Presidents before Trump was that the EU did NOT need to harmonise and form their own European Army.
Why not? It's a great idea! Rather than 178 chaotic, different, bespoke weapons platforms from 27 different national commands - they could have one EU command streamlining and mass producing something like 30 co-ordinated weapons platforms as America does. It would make them vastly more cost effective - giving them literally more ‘bang for their buck.’ The NATO alliance between an EU Army and USA would have been even more formidable!
Question: So why would previous American President’s discourage this?
Answer: Good old fashioned self-interest. Jobs at home!
The EU has recently been spending about €90 bn on military hardware.
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/defence-numbers/
63% of this is spent in America.
EU buys too much defense equipment abroad, especially from US: Report
That’s €56 bn or converted to USD $60 bn.
Let’s spell it out.
America’s income from this deal = $60,000 million.
America’s annual NATO cost? = $ 567 million.
That means 105 times more income than expense.
America wins.
So can we please drop this Trumpian charade that America is being ripped off by NATO? Financially - it's almost exactly the other way around. Let's also remember - every taxpayer dollar going to an American stationed in Europe to defend NATO is still a tax payer dollar going to an AMERICAN. It's still an American job! In a way it's not leaving the country.
In other words - here is a free $60 bn from Europe - you win!
Remember - the whole point of NATO is not money, but defence. It's about the reputation and reality of being the biggest most successful military alliance in history. The more Trump talks it down, the less effective that reputation and reality are. The more likely it is Putin might advance towards NATO to retake former Soviet nations he wants back. The more chance we have of Putin overstepping - and something really nasty happening to us all!
As the New York Times says:
“It Isn’t Just Trump. America’s Whole Reputation Is Shot.”
Many years ago, I asked a friend who had been hired as a senior foreign policy official what he’d learned in government that he didn’t know beforehand. He replied: “I used to think policy-making was 75 percent about relationships. Now I realize it’s 95 percent about relationships.”
It’s very hard to do big things alone. So competent leaders and nations rely on relationships built on shared values, shared history and shared trust. They construct coalitions to take on the big challenges of the age, including the biggest: whether the 21st century is going to be a Chinese century or another American century.
In that contest the Chinese have many advantages, but until recently America had the decisive one — we had more friends around the world. Unfortunately, over the last month and a half, America has smashed a lot of those relationships to smithereens.
President Trump does not seem to notice or care that if you betray people, or jerk them around, they will revile you. Over the last few weeks, the Europeans have gone from shock to bewilderment to revulsion. This period was for them what 9/11 was for us — the stripping away of illusions, the exposure of an existential threat. The Europeans have realized that America, the nation they thought was their friend, is actually a rogue superpower.
In Canada and Mexico you now win popularity by treating America as your foe. Over the next few years, I predict, Trump will cut a deal with China, doing to Taiwan some version of what he has already done to Ukraine — betray the little guy to suck up to the big guy. Nations across Asia will come to the same conclusion the Europeans have already reached: America is a Judas.
This is not just a Trump problem; America’s whole reputation is shot. I don’t care if Abraham Lincoln himself walked into the White House in 2029, no foreign leader can responsibly trust a nation that is perpetually four years away from electing another authoritarian nihilist.
So what’s going to happen?
NATO is over. Joe Biden spent four years defending the postwar liberal order. That order grew out of a specific historical experience: Isolationism after World War I led to the horrors of World War II; internationalism after World War II led to 80 years of superpower peace. You tell that narrative to the younger generations and many look at you as if you’re talking about the 14th century. The postwar order was a historic accomplishment, but it was a product of its time, and we are not going back to it. It does no good to try to revive the ghost of Dean Acheson; we have to think of a new global architecture.
The West is (temporarily) over. What we call “the West” is a centuries-long conversation — Socrates searching for truth, Rembrandt embodying compassion, Locke developing enlightenment liberalism, Francis Bacon pioneering the scientific method. This is our heritage. For all of our history America understood itself as the culmination of the great Western project. The idea of the West was reified in all the alliances and exchanges between Europe and North America.
But the category “the West” does not seem to be in Donald Trump’s head. Trump is cutting America off from its spiritual and intellectual roots. He has completed the project that Jesse Jackson started in 1987 when he and a bunch of progressive activists at Stanford chanted, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go.”
The new civilizational struggle is between hard and soft. Don’t overthink this. Trump is not playing four-dimensional chess and trying to pry Russia from its alliance with China. American foreign policy is now oriented to whatever gets Trump’s hormones surging. He has a lifelong thing for manly virility. In the MAGA mind, Vladimir Putin codes as hard; Western Europe codes as soft. Elon Musk codes as hard; U.S.A.I.D. codes as soft. WWE is hard; universities are soft. Struggles for dominance are hard; alliances are soft.
More on Europe etc. Article continues....
More on Europe etc. Article continues....
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