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This is absurd beyond belief. If I was Merkel I would have upped and left right there. This guy Trump needs to learn some manners.
Yes, honoring your commitments is for suckers.
I love it, another unnamed source.
You dems are getting really desperate, your attacks have been quite pathetic since the Russian conspircy theory fell apart, and it was confirmed that Trump was in fact spied on.
Germany can't just suddenly double their defence spending, as much of the money would go to waste.
This week, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen announced that she wants to spend €130 billion ($140 billion) on defense equipment until 2030 — increasing the overall defense spending by €3-4 billion annually over the next 15 years writes Christian Mölling. The bold announcement was actually the latest step in a longer-term plan by the German government to reverse the decline of the defense budget. But though the budget increase is analytically wrong, it is politically right.
By increasing the budget without demanding greater efficiency, von der Leyen could actually be making things worse: a new influx of money could undermine attempts to get a bigger bang for the German taxpayer’s buck.
A third critical factor is time. The experience of recent years has shown that wasteful defense expenditure — for example procurement of the wrong materiel, which later had to be adapted to the actual operational environment — can only be corrected slowly. The root causes of the mess in which the Bundeswehr finds itself today go back 15 to 20 years. It takes years to make even the smallest projects efficient and thus to release resources that can be used for other tasks.
More dramatic upward or downward shifts only waste additional money: if the budget rises too fast, money will be spent without any real increase in capabilities; if it decreases, projects will have to be cancelled and investment wasted. Both undermine political legitimacy and national security.
But no big deal. Hope Italy, Austria, Hungary and Romania will increase their defence budgets a lot too, and then we have the old bros back in business again.
Should of told all those NATO countries that they were slime prior to begging them to fight for you in Afghanistan and then Iraq.
The only time article 5 was ever invoked was by the US because they wanted their European NATO allies to defend them, not the other way around. Europe is not mooching off of the US at all.
hmmmm. Not so much on behalf of NATO as behalf of the US for covering a shortfall. Least that's how I see it. lol, Diplomatically, yea, it falls rather short. But it does have the advantage of making a point. Moren' one actually. Think about what we the US spend annually being the world policeman. How much our military is used in "humanitarian and peacekeeping" roles, that Democrats seem to heavily support, as do NATO nations, when the money and resources we spend on those missions could e used here at home to far better good.
If we would (or could) withdraw from being the worlds police force (which often protects European interests more than our own) we might be able to actually fix our health care system and build one that really does provide quality medical care. We might be able to seriously reduce the problem of homelessness, maybe even come up with things that actually put a dent in violent crime.
Our infrastructure always seems to be a bone to pick when funding is discussed. There's another area where the shortfalls in NATO and the UN that we have been picking up the slack for could be utilized. Though this was indeed a most undiplomatic methodology, I can see a valid point in play here. One I have been pondering how to approach for some time. lol, but hey Trump done did it. Didn't he,,,
Not exactly. Russia is our new best friend. It's a good thing that Putin is not a jack booted thug like the protesters in California.
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
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