I’m in agreement with you, I was just making a cheap “Putin is in charge of the USA” kind of joke.
Well, that’s not exactly good timing or very reassuring, even if I agree with the principle.
Except we really can’t “moderate our commitment.” If a threat to NATO’s European members is severe, we have to react, for our own safety. There’s no way we could sit back and say, “well, you didn’t pony up enough money so we’re not going to help you against a Russian invasion.” Not that that is at all likely, but really, in what way could we “moderate our commitment” without cutting our own throats?
There’s lots of things the US could do while still reacting to specific threats. Not that it should, but the US could stop or reduce participation in joint training exercises. It could withdraw from bases in Europe. It could withdraw support for/agitate against NATO enlargement.
Reading Mattis’ actual statements it really felt like a bit better.
[quote]Mattis, a retired Marine general, recalled Wednesday that when he was NATO’s supreme allied commander of transformation from November 2007 to September 2009, he watched as then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned NATO nations that Congress and the American people “would lose their patience for carrying a disproportionate burden” of the defense of allies.
That impatience, Mattis said, is now a “governmental reality.”
“No longer can the American taxpayer carry a disproportionate share of the defense of Western values,” Mattis said. “Americans cannot care more for your children’s security than you do. Disregard for military readiness demonstrates a lack of respect for ourselves, for the alliance and for the freedoms we inherited, which are now clearly threatened.”[/quote]
Basically: “You’ve blown us off forever on this and now it’s come home to roost. Start acting like you give a shit.”
He’s totally right, too.
Guess what, Europe? Get your fucking shit together. You aren’t children.
Russia’s trying so very hard to provoke Trump into doing something stupid.
I mean… it’s Trump so anything he does will be stupid.
This might be the one area where I agree with the Trump administration’s position.
NATO absolutely serves a purpose, yes, and the US should be unwavering in our commitment to the alliance. But, well, we shouldn’t have to pay for the whole damn thing.
I agree Adam. The US should absolutely have an unwavering commitment to the alliance that is matched by similar unwavering commitments among the rest of our allies. I think Trump is handling all this ineptly (as usual), but I think it long overdue for our European partners to step up (excluding many of the eastern members of the alliance, who have already been doing so for good reason).
Which is why having Mattis be the messenger is a good thing. Mattis is about as pro-NATO as you can get (you know, literally being it’s Supreme Commander for a couple years) and having him stand up and say “Stop fucking around” sends a good message. If one of Trump’s idiots had said it everyone would blow it off because they’re all crazy people unlikely to last the month anyway.
I like that, that’s a great way to put it.
But all of those hurt us as much as anyone else. Arguably, it hurts us more, because it diminishes the value of an asset that we could count on if the shit hit the fan.
And I’m not actually sure we want the Europeans to put more into defense. Up to a point, sure; there are things that could be equalized a bit more, definitely. But, think about it. If they increase the size and funding of their military forces, they’ll rightly want more say in policy and how those forces might be used. One of the things we gain by footing most of the bill is ultimately having most of the say in things. Right now we pay more but really call the shots on NATO. I’m not sure we want to risk that.
Oh, and to add more fun to things, CNN has a story that the Pentagon is considering sending ground troops into Syria. Now, whether this is just a sort of “all options have always been considered” thing, or something new, isn’t clear. But it doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy.
The likelihood of that happening hinges on whether someone told Trump that Obama was too much of a coward to do it.
Geez, as playground politics as that sounds, it’s all too likely to be true.
That having been said, the issue is complicated by the fact that the US spends more on its military than the next three countries combined. It’s nice to have the best military in the world but it comes at a very, very high cost and when you look at it as a percentage of our annual spending, it seems unhealthy. Is this a model we should be imposing on the rest of the world?
Yes, it’s a little unfair that we pay more for their defense than they do but it’s a choice we’ve made as a nation regarding spending priorities and it’s only partly for reasons related to defense and security. The military industrial complex Eisenhower warned of is a very real thing and our military spending goes a little beyond reason because of it. Also, other nations don’t have nearly the wealth we do so asking them to keep up not only skews their spending priorities to be more militarily driven, it may also be impossible.
It’s a complex issue and I’m not saying “military spending bad!” Just that it’s not as straight forward as it appears on first glance. (That’s the Republican way of looking at things – If we can over simplify this we can put forth policy that seems like it makes sense in theory, while glossing over the reasons why it doesn’t necessarily make sense in reality.)
And it’s not like we are going to quit spending money on the military if they don’t comply, so what exactly are they threatening them with?
We’re threatening to put them on notice.
It’s literally in the treaty and it’s not remotely anything close to what we spend.
They have to spend 2% of GDP. Only 4 of them do anymore. If Greece and Estonia can manage, I’m fairly sure the rest of them can as well.
