NATO Funding & NATO's "Destiny"

""Twenty-three of the 28 member nations are still not paying what they should," Trump told heads of NATO states assembled Thursday in Brussels. "Many of these nations owe massive amounts of money from past years."   It's not the first time Trump has suggested other NATO members have a debt to pay. 

But NATO does not keep a running tab of what its members spend on defense. Treaty members target spending 2% of economic output on defense -- but that is merely a guideline.  NATO members spend money on their own defense. The funds they send to NATO directly account for less than 1% of overall defense spending by members of the alliance. CNN.com

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Less than 1% of the funds committed for overall defense by the member states are paid to NATO as an organization.  These are used for running headquarters, a communications spine, etc.  The other 99% are spent by the member states on their own defense.  Can it really be that DJT does not know that?  That seems impossible but ...

And then there is the grander question of NATO's purpose in the post-USSR world.  The alliance was founded for the purpose of holding Western Europe together in a bloc to resist Soviet hegemonism.  That was its only purpose.  Well, the Soviet Union no longer exists.  The Borg strives mightily every day to make people believe that today's Russia = the USSR but that is a mighty hard sell if the pitch is not made to people who know no history, geography, economics, and who cannot think for themselves.

Russia is nothing like the USSR.  There is no good reason for NATO to exist other than as a plaything for Borgist meddlers.  Let the Europeans defend themselves.  Is that not what the existence of the EU implies?  Are these countries not capable of managing their own affairs?  pl  

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/25/news/nato-funding-explained-trump/index.html

Comments

[Nancy K]

Just because she said it does not make it true. It sounds more the bragging of a mother. You are lumping a lot of atrocities together and putting the blame on one family, or is in one race you are blaming?

[kao_hsien_chih]

That is the point isn't it? Countries like Portugal, Greece, Latvia, and Estonia sought EU membership to no small degree because their leaders sought prestige of being in "the" exclusive European club--thus my point about "prestige" and vanity driving much of its expansion. With the membership came the opportunity for the elites in these countries to partake in the international partying, so to speak, for their own benefit, even if, for the rest of their populations, benefits were limited at best of the times and negative (compared to the burden of the membership) at the worst of the times.

[Tom Cafferty]

Heros is probably a fan and avid follower of the conspiracy theorist David Ickes from the UK. I always found some of Ickes stuff amusing in that he proposes an alien race of lizards appearing in human form among whom are the Rothschild and the British royal family among many others. Alien lizards are an excellent and amusing analog for the borg. But Ickes is just another deranged grifter who is antisemitic too. I guess the photo of Trump and the orb in KSA must really give the wackos chills. "It all started with a lizard boy and his red shield in a galaxy far away...."

[Boronx]

NATO with large U.S. presence in Europe makes it harder for NATO memberss to go to war with each other.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Italy and Sweden will be extinguished long before Japan, China or Iran.

[turcopolier]

Boronx

Are the Europeans wayward children that they cannot manage their own mutual relations? pl

[Babak Makkinejad]

Russian Federation is not a pariah state except among the Borg and the Borgistas.

The Western Fortress does not have strategic options against the Russia Federation - and likely not against the People's Republic of China either.

A future war among the 3 may last decades, perhaps centuries, as they slug it out in a non-nuclear way across the globe.

[Sam Peralta]

NATO has passed its sell by date. That should be obvious to anyone who is not a Borgist tool.

The Europeans who are always condescending towards us "boorish" Americans claim they can take care of themselves. Why aren't they demanding that the US military leave their lands?

[ked]

excellent! a proper acronym is far more than half the institution these days.

[different clue]

charly,

China had such a high population and birthrate that China's population itself was going to be suicidal. So they corrected course fast and hard.

China still has so many people that if they slowly and carefully permit more chidlbirth again, they could end up with still 5-6 hundred million people and maintaining that number. Many enough that they would still have the population component of mighty power, few enough that they would not destroy their own physical habitat out from under that power.

[ked]

well, he's opened the window wide... EU just needs to choose the door & thank him profusely for his leadeship.
Trump is an easy mark for that style of manipulation... forever seeking recognition that he's a Real Player.

[different clue]

Prem,

Perhaps we should deconflict with Russia and then renormalize with Russia. We could then cancel seeking all the recreational military/diplomatic conflicts which the DC FedBorg Regime currently seeks.
That would allow us to reduce our military spending by reducing our military challenges and still support all the military forces we need to support for genuine national safety and defense.

We could then lower our defense spending to European levels per capital and spend that money on domestic improvement and social uplift and paying down some debt all at the same time.

It would require forcing the Establishment to give up its view that the entire world is America's "near abroad". We could accept the basic fact of "spheres of influence" and we could stop spending people, money, and effort on attempts to freedomize and democrafy the world.

[ked]

Yes! along w/ the Rothschilds and the Lizard-people (not the Alien ones, the ones from our Hollow Earth, obviously).

[charly]

Sweden? The only Western country with an almost positive birthrate under "natives" It is that there are so many low birthrate Iranians otherwise Sweden would have a larger population in 2100 than Japan

[charly]

I don't mean elite prestige, having a say in regulation creation is very important. It let you steer the regulations so the rules are good for you. Paradoxically small countries are better in steering regulations favorably because they are only interested in a few regulations

[charly]

I'm not the first who say that about China. If you look at birthrate at a regional level than it is or way above replacement or significant below replacement and all the East Asian countries are all really significant below replacement so China will probably be like them after one-child has ended. The only way birthrate wouldn't be a problem is if Red China could get the birthrate up again to 2 kids per women. Problem is the other Chinese countries all have very low birthrates and their states can't get it up, not even Singapore which isn't exactly known as a state that stays out of the private lives of its citizens.

If you exclude Japan than all the richer countries in the world have migration number akin to Europe and if you exclude inner EU migrants than migration is often lower in Western Europe than in say Korea. Seoul is for a reason the second city of Mongolia

[charly]

Block imports? You mean block exports. Europe runs on Russian gas so no need to blow up ships

Brexit was because England had to many Polish immigrants and unlike normal immigrants they also took the Not-a-dream-job-but-i'm-content-with-it jobs.

[charly]

Arctic pivot is because the Arctic sea has been opened for shipping because of CO2. There was no Europe to China transport through the Arctic Sea. Not because of the USSR but because it was impossible

[jonst]

Sorry list, I forgot, I should have put an 'irony alert' before my quip re China, above. My bad..

[Boronx]

I doubt they ever will be able to on their own.

[sid_finster]

That's what *they* want you to think. ;)

[sid_finster]

Doesn't make sense unless Mattis is unaware of any US or coalition forces who died at the hands of Sunni insurgents.