Trump's point about NATO countries needing to adhere to the funding that was agreed with mutually is a good one and I'm super confused why he was ridiculed about it when he said it. I mean, what's the point of the alliance if we don't do the things we agree to do?

[–] rhys@mastodon.rhys.wtf 8 points 2 weeks ago

@vga @gravitas_deficiency Adhering to the much-flaunted spending commitments wasn't ridiculous, but Trump's framing of it was.

Back when he raised it, he was threatening to withdraw the US from the alliance if other nations didn't start adhering to it, and as recently as this year he's said he'll encourage Putin to do "whatever the hell he wants" to states who don't meet the spending commitment, directly undermining the collective defence principle of NATO.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

He was ridiculed because he thought that America was paying these countries to close the gap. He thought he could save money if the other countries would own up. Which is just not true. Since the US didn’t put a dime into these countries’ military spending. If all NATO countries would reach the requirement it wouldn’t move the US military budget. It’s in America’s own interest to keep the forward operating bases in Europe fully staffed and armed.

[–] jmsy@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

I despise him, but 1 of 2 good things I think he did was call out NATO nations for not contributing their fair share. Merkel's face when he said this was like that of a dog that's been caught getting into the cupboard.

(the other thing he did was to call out drug companies for making medications so expensive. of course he didn't followup, but that was a good thing to say)

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The problem is the technology gap between nations. Europeans are literally sending over their smartest and they are going over because all they care about is greed, politics be damned because because to them it's a rest of the world going around in a cycle of stupid problem. Which is stagnating both societies, science, and global security. The US is using those engineers to build the most modern weapons against fictitious "if we won't, they will" enemies, weapons that are disseminated to opposing world powers through corruption except those still stuck in the system of legitimacy rapidly devolving into subservience, weapons that are getting battle-hardened through imperialistic use throughout conflict world wide through the industrial military complex.

Europe militarily has been in shambles since WW2, evidenced by how much of its colonial ambitions it had to give up. It wasn't just oligarchs suddenly becoming good. What is going to happen is not that Europe is suddenly going to become capable of sustaining NATO, it's that it is going to have to give concessions to the nations that aren't going to be cutting them off. Before, that was the US, now it will have to be Russia and China.