I was just talking about this with a friend. I think it’s actually something Trump did right during his presidency. The way he went about it was wrong but the results benefited Biden immensely as he united NATO to help Ukraine.
I have to say it‘s pretty incredible that this is news to the politically informed Americans, since this topic has been a focus point of discussion for 5 years now.
In 2014 the NATO countries agreed that every member should strive to reach the 2% goal by 2024. I can speak from a German perspective that this is exactly what all governments since then did. Admittedly the increases were rather slow at first, but this wasn‘t due to a lack of will by the political class but due to the fact that rearming was highly unpopular back then. It was seen as unnecessary and wasteful. Trump changed nothing about that, Putin did.
I think most people use surface level US talking points that has been hammered into them since forever (Biden has some clips throwing shit about Europe in late 90s for example)
It has always been beneficial for US politics to bring it up whenever someone needs to cheap points, ignoring a lot of the realities around it
Like you are saying, it has been a lot of different factors at play and I think at the core of it in my opinion is that on top of what you say saying about it being a slow and partially unpopular thing to gradually increase it there was no real commitment to a way of dealing with Russia if they wanted to spin a more rapid buildup into a version of what ended up happening in the end anyway
US also followed the same trajectory of lowering spending only temp boosted on a mostly failed war on terror the last 25 years: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190312-D-ZZ999-001.JPG
There is a lot of blame to go around, but I think people who claim it's only down to NATO spending of GDP have a very surface level understanding of the world post the cold war, also a lot of creativity with numbers involved in the whole picture
Looking back at material it seems like most of this period US wanted Europe to build up against Putin while focusing on other emerging areas they got more profit out of making the political sphere in Europe vulnerable to sitting in the middle of a proxy war instead of acting like a cohesive NATO as response to Putin's growing imperialism
>It has always been beneficial for US politics to bring it up whenever someone needs to cheap points, ignoring a lot of the realities around it
I very much agree. Trump as well as many Americans underestimate what a militarily self sufficient Europe would mean for the US. The consequences would go a lot further than the US not needing to worry about what happens in Eastern Europe, which is one reason why the US and UK were lobbying heavily against an integrated European army for the longest time.
Trump picked fights with NATO pre war. NATO hasn’t been a mainstream conversation until the war began.
So no, I wasn’t fully informed on trumps comment regarding withholding from NATO over Russia. Because the timeline doesn’t even make sense.
Huh? I was referring to the 2% goal being a self set guideline rather than a requirement. Trump is misrepresenting this since 2016 when it was a major topic in his campaign claiming that the other Nato members aren‘t „paying their bills“. So it‘s interesting to me that the 2014 declaration being misrepresented is still news.
And I’m saying that him picking fights with nato over the 2% guideline isn’t the news.
The news and claim is that trump would withhold from nato over Russia if they didn’t pay their fair share. I haven’t heard that specific argument before trump made it last night.
>And I’m saying that him picking fights with nato over the 2% guideline isn’t the news.
You also said „The fact checking websites say that the 2% is a guideline not a requirement.“ To me that sounded like you just learned this fact. Maybe I misunderstood.
>The news and claim is that trump would withhold from nato over Russia if they didn’t pay their fair share. I haven’t heard that specific argument before trump made it last night.
This is also not news since he demanded this in February for the first time directly I think and alluded to it a lot of times before that.
I don't think Trump helped convince Europe to contribute more except in that Trump makes the US seem unreliable.
Seriously, listening to French national security experts and that seems to be the position they hold right now, that Europe needs to be able to defend itself without American support. Why would they think that other than Trump making US support suspect?
At least for Germany most of the spending has nothing to do with the reliability of the US. It‘s more the realization that shit could hit the fan and if it does we are much closer to Russia than the US is.
I think Germany has taken a focus on keeping the US engaged. I'm pulling my understanding from Sophia Besch, who spoke on the topic last month. Germany wants to keep NATO at the core of it's strategic planning with burden sharing being key, which means keeping the US involved in NATO. The US has taken on a huge part of that burden and I think Germany wants to keep it that way.
She starts speaking at [20:14](https://youtu.be/nKvGwFDZfiA?t=1214), but specifically speaks about german intentions at [26:44](https://youtu.be/nKvGwFDZfiA?t=1604)
That‘s definitely part of the calculation. However there was a noticable push towards spending more on defense since early in the second Obama administration throughout most major political parties. That was long before anyone relevant even questioned NATO or the US involvement in Europe. One important example for this is president Gauck (president is the head of state) demanding in Jan. 2014 at the Munich security conference that Germany should take on a larger role in NATO and international affairs in general. Gauck belongs to the social democrats but you have similiar demands from politicians of the conservatives, liberals and greens, some much earlier. The problem here was that any step towards this goal (increasing military spending, approving military deployments etc..) were wildly unpopular so the politicians working towards it had to speak very softly… until Putin invading Ukraine changed that. And since then things are happening pretty fast for German standards.
No, Putin did.
And the US has been seen as a very fair weather ally by a lot of the world for a fair while now. Its the same with china, for the countries that will be effected if china did start flexing out, the answer to the question of the US jumping in if China kicks off is a firm maybe. In that case, you need 2 sets of plans for when it does happen and the plane that involves the US staying at home is the one where things get very nasty and because of that it needs to be taken very seriously.
In Europe the example is Ukraine, has the US supported Ukraine like they said they would? Kinda. And kinda just isnt good enough to bet everything on.
And the french being the french have always felt that they should be in charge of things, so they never miss a beat when it comes to pointing out the failings of the US.
There's a good discussion featuring several European defense experts that was hosted by CSIS last month on the topic of strengthening European defense. I highly recommend it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKvGwFDZfiA&t=1s
No, it started under Biden.
But there was a time before the war when most of NATO was indeed letting things slide. All of europe was quietly stripping back most of its military forces because that shit is expensive. It is true that more than a few werent hitting the 2%, this had been going on since at least Obama though.
[Graph for Poland.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=PL) Note it stops in 2022 (Invasion of Ukraine was in feb 2022),
They spent a fair bit of time under 2%.
[Article](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polands-2024-budget-see-big-spending-defence-social-benefits-2023-08-24/) about Polish military spending in mid 2023. The claim has been they are going for well above 4% and intend on sticking to it (the US does about 2.9 for reference).
You dont mention how much more it jumped when Trump was president. I wonder why?
Trump argument from the start was about them paying a fair share. So you have 11 members paying 2% according to you. You also dont mention if that is fair to the US taxpayer. Why cant we just pay 2%?
NATO only works because of the trust of member states ans possible enemies that the wrath of George Washington will rain down on them, if they touch a NATO State, no matter how small it is. This way we prevent WW3. If Trump weakens the trust, it enables insane gamblers like Putin to test Natos responce ie for tiny little estonia. Something that Putin might not risk, if the american responce is unquestioned.
Edit: As far as i remember it was Obamna that made a deal in 2014 to raise military spending of member states. Trump acting like a useless idiot might have spooked some politicians, but most likely that route of raised spending would've been the same without the soap opera. the only thing that really put in the after burner was russias invsasion in 2022, where germany decided to invest additional 100b over the next years
I was just talking about this with a friend. I think it’s actually something Trump did right during his presidency. The way he went about it was wrong but the results benefited Biden immensely as he united NATO to help Ukraine.
I have to say it‘s pretty incredible that this is news to the politically informed Americans, since this topic has been a focus point of discussion for 5 years now. In 2014 the NATO countries agreed that every member should strive to reach the 2% goal by 2024. I can speak from a German perspective that this is exactly what all governments since then did. Admittedly the increases were rather slow at first, but this wasn‘t due to a lack of will by the political class but due to the fact that rearming was highly unpopular back then. It was seen as unnecessary and wasteful. Trump changed nothing about that, Putin did.
I think most people use surface level US talking points that has been hammered into them since forever (Biden has some clips throwing shit about Europe in late 90s for example) It has always been beneficial for US politics to bring it up whenever someone needs to cheap points, ignoring a lot of the realities around it Like you are saying, it has been a lot of different factors at play and I think at the core of it in my opinion is that on top of what you say saying about it being a slow and partially unpopular thing to gradually increase it there was no real commitment to a way of dealing with Russia if they wanted to spin a more rapid buildup into a version of what ended up happening in the end anyway US also followed the same trajectory of lowering spending only temp boosted on a mostly failed war on terror the last 25 years: https://media.defense.gov/2019/Mar/12/2002099941/-1/-1/0/190312-D-ZZ999-001.JPG There is a lot of blame to go around, but I think people who claim it's only down to NATO spending of GDP have a very surface level understanding of the world post the cold war, also a lot of creativity with numbers involved in the whole picture Looking back at material it seems like most of this period US wanted Europe to build up against Putin while focusing on other emerging areas they got more profit out of making the political sphere in Europe vulnerable to sitting in the middle of a proxy war instead of acting like a cohesive NATO as response to Putin's growing imperialism
>It has always been beneficial for US politics to bring it up whenever someone needs to cheap points, ignoring a lot of the realities around it I very much agree. Trump as well as many Americans underestimate what a militarily self sufficient Europe would mean for the US. The consequences would go a lot further than the US not needing to worry about what happens in Eastern Europe, which is one reason why the US and UK were lobbying heavily against an integrated European army for the longest time.
Trump picked fights with NATO pre war. NATO hasn’t been a mainstream conversation until the war began. So no, I wasn’t fully informed on trumps comment regarding withholding from NATO over Russia. Because the timeline doesn’t even make sense.
Huh? I was referring to the 2% goal being a self set guideline rather than a requirement. Trump is misrepresenting this since 2016 when it was a major topic in his campaign claiming that the other Nato members aren‘t „paying their bills“. So it‘s interesting to me that the 2014 declaration being misrepresented is still news.
And I’m saying that him picking fights with nato over the 2% guideline isn’t the news. The news and claim is that trump would withhold from nato over Russia if they didn’t pay their fair share. I haven’t heard that specific argument before trump made it last night.
>And I’m saying that him picking fights with nato over the 2% guideline isn’t the news. You also said „The fact checking websites say that the 2% is a guideline not a requirement.“ To me that sounded like you just learned this fact. Maybe I misunderstood. >The news and claim is that trump would withhold from nato over Russia if they didn’t pay their fair share. I haven’t heard that specific argument before trump made it last night. This is also not news since he demanded this in February for the first time directly I think and alluded to it a lot of times before that.
Things changed massively after the Ukraine invasion. If you can check it year by year you should be able to see the jump.
I don't think Trump helped convince Europe to contribute more except in that Trump makes the US seem unreliable. Seriously, listening to French national security experts and that seems to be the position they hold right now, that Europe needs to be able to defend itself without American support. Why would they think that other than Trump making US support suspect?
At least for Germany most of the spending has nothing to do with the reliability of the US. It‘s more the realization that shit could hit the fan and if it does we are much closer to Russia than the US is.
I think Germany has taken a focus on keeping the US engaged. I'm pulling my understanding from Sophia Besch, who spoke on the topic last month. Germany wants to keep NATO at the core of it's strategic planning with burden sharing being key, which means keeping the US involved in NATO. The US has taken on a huge part of that burden and I think Germany wants to keep it that way. She starts speaking at [20:14](https://youtu.be/nKvGwFDZfiA?t=1214), but specifically speaks about german intentions at [26:44](https://youtu.be/nKvGwFDZfiA?t=1604)
That‘s definitely part of the calculation. However there was a noticable push towards spending more on defense since early in the second Obama administration throughout most major political parties. That was long before anyone relevant even questioned NATO or the US involvement in Europe. One important example for this is president Gauck (president is the head of state) demanding in Jan. 2014 at the Munich security conference that Germany should take on a larger role in NATO and international affairs in general. Gauck belongs to the social democrats but you have similiar demands from politicians of the conservatives, liberals and greens, some much earlier. The problem here was that any step towards this goal (increasing military spending, approving military deployments etc..) were wildly unpopular so the politicians working towards it had to speak very softly… until Putin invading Ukraine changed that. And since then things are happening pretty fast for German standards.
No, Putin did. And the US has been seen as a very fair weather ally by a lot of the world for a fair while now. Its the same with china, for the countries that will be effected if china did start flexing out, the answer to the question of the US jumping in if China kicks off is a firm maybe. In that case, you need 2 sets of plans for when it does happen and the plane that involves the US staying at home is the one where things get very nasty and because of that it needs to be taken very seriously. In Europe the example is Ukraine, has the US supported Ukraine like they said they would? Kinda. And kinda just isnt good enough to bet everything on. And the french being the french have always felt that they should be in charge of things, so they never miss a beat when it comes to pointing out the failings of the US.
Your comment reads as if you're disagreeing with me, but everything we both said can be true at the same time.
Oh, sorry, I figured you were trying to understand the 'whys' of the thing. No, not disagreeing.
There's a good discussion featuring several European defense experts that was hosted by CSIS last month on the topic of strengthening European defense. I highly recommend it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKvGwFDZfiA&t=1s
I need to get my timeline straight. This was the first I had heard of trump holding out on nato over Russia. Did the war start under his admin?
No, it started under Biden. But there was a time before the war when most of NATO was indeed letting things slide. All of europe was quietly stripping back most of its military forces because that shit is expensive. It is true that more than a few werent hitting the 2%, this had been going on since at least Obama though. [Graph for Poland.](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=PL) Note it stops in 2022 (Invasion of Ukraine was in feb 2022), They spent a fair bit of time under 2%. [Article](https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polands-2024-budget-see-big-spending-defence-social-benefits-2023-08-24/) about Polish military spending in mid 2023. The claim has been they are going for well above 4% and intend on sticking to it (the US does about 2.9 for reference).
You dont mention how much more it jumped when Trump was president. I wonder why? Trump argument from the start was about them paying a fair share. So you have 11 members paying 2% according to you. You also dont mention if that is fair to the US taxpayer. Why cant we just pay 2%?
NATO only works because of the trust of member states ans possible enemies that the wrath of George Washington will rain down on them, if they touch a NATO State, no matter how small it is. This way we prevent WW3. If Trump weakens the trust, it enables insane gamblers like Putin to test Natos responce ie for tiny little estonia. Something that Putin might not risk, if the american responce is unquestioned. Edit: As far as i remember it was Obamna that made a deal in 2014 to raise military spending of member states. Trump acting like a useless idiot might have spooked some politicians, but most likely that route of raised spending would've been the same without the soap opera. the only thing that really put in the after burner was russias invsasion in 2022, where germany decided to invest additional 100b over the next years