To be as rude and offensive as possible
The explosion was almost instantaneous—over breakfast, no less—at the beginning of this year’s NATO summit in Brussels. With cameras switched on, and no question they were recording, Donald Trump told his Atlantic Alliance counterparts that Germany is “totally controlled by Russia.” Berlin buys from Moscow more and more of the natural gas it uses. So, in one of his trademark versions of common sense, which commonly ignores basic history and fundamental facts, he asked why the U.S. should spend a lot of money to defend Germany from Russia if Germany was dependent on Russia for energy. Trump incorrectly inflated Germany’s reliance on Russian energy to convey, yet again, a picture of NATO as a protection racket and the U.S. demanding its envelope of cash be heavier.
What was surprising here to many Europeans was not the issue of Germany’s energy supplies or defense budget, which ought to be discussed, but the way it was raised, quite consciously, to be as rude and offensive as possible to America’s richest and most powerful ally on the continent. This after Trump turned the meeting last month in Canada of the G7 most economically advanced democracies into an acrimonious debacle. (He not only insulted German Chancellor Angela Merkel there, he threw a Starburst candy at her.)
Being rude and offensive is his only talent…well, that and being cloyingly sweet and loving to authoritarian shits.
“The mood here is mix of concern, disappointment, anger and disgust,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, who until October led the U.S. Army’s European contingent and who attended the NATO summit.
“I expected bad, and I kept telling people to expect bad, but it is still surreal to see,” one current NATO official told The Daily Beast. “Everyone is in disbelief, worried [NATO’s] credibility is shot, bracing for what comes out of the private sessions—this thing is just getting started and we still have to make it through the substantive sessions, which will be long and boring. We definitely know we’re going to have do clean-up; we just don’t know the extent of the damage or whether anyone will take us seriously. And there is still the UK trip and the Helsinki trip, which will color everything here.” (Trump is headed to England and Scotland before his July 16 summit with Vladimir Putin in Finland.)
We’re on a runaway train. Good luck to all of us.
As François Heisbourg, one of the continent’s most respected defense analysts, noted, Trump has been dissing NATO for decades, but now as president his views count. And Heisbourg’s numerous sources tell him that the G7 meeting last month was, behind the scenes, even worse than most headlines made it seem, with Trump talking about the E.U. essentially as a rival rather like China, only weaker. And in private as as well as public likening NATO to Nafta: a bad deal for America.
“Trump has a vision of the world in which everything is bilateral and the United States can monetize its power,” said Heisbourg. “Turning NATO into a protection racket, that is the best fate that he promises us.”
Well in all fairness, two is as high as he can count.
And once again, Trump displays his utter failure to grasp the purpose of NATO (from a U.S.) perspective. It’s not about ‘protecting Europe from Russia’. It’s about protecting Europe from itself. Raising their contributions to NATO to 4% of GDP (Trump’s demand) would result in the same situation we’ve seen twice before–massive military build-ups by each of the European powers (often specifically to defend against Russian aggression). The problem is that when nations have massive armies, eventually someone gets the brilliant idea of USING those forces.
By supporting NATO as a means to shield Europe from Russia, we also accomplish the real goal–keeping the German, French and British armed forces down to a size where none of them feels like invading anyone else.
Who would know better than Trump about being totally controlled by Russia?
No puppet, no puppet, you’re the puppet.
It’s not just weapons grade projection, it’s weapons-of-mass-destruction grade projection, and with all the usual subtlety we can rely on from Trump — that of a poorly raised toddler who’s missed his nap time.
While I’m sure the Americans who helped found NATO had some altruistic reasons for doing so, it’s a lot more self interested really.
The existing NATO structure ensures that the US is buffered from Russia very effectively, while having its own nuclear weapons practically on Russia’s borders. It places the US in the position of ‘most to gain’ and everyone else in the position of ‘most to loose’ in the event of conflict.
US military spending to achieve that is just good insurance. In any event, pulling the US out of NATO/Europe wouldn’t actually make much of a dent in US military spending in any case. It’s not like you’ll suddenly reduce the size of your military, releasing manpower and turning tanks, bombs and aircraft into agricultural implements. Plus the loss of all those prime overseas bases would dramatically reduce the reach of American military and intelligence power.
The professionals on all sides now this. Hell, even most amateurs know this. It’s only Trump and a few idiots that don’t.
It’s time to reconfigure the Bundeswehr into the Wehrmacht and get those Leopard 3s rolling… Before long the Great Pumpkin is going to be ordering joint military exercises with the Russian Federation…
For that matter – pulling the U.S. out of NATO would mean jacking up our military even more, because it’d have to be measured against the full EU/NATO forces as a possible adversary.