The Axis of Unethical Conduct, or AUC, the collective leftist and antiTrump allies consisting of “the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media, certainly had themselves a pounce orgy when Trump said over the weekend that he wouldn’t allow the U.S. to protect a NATO nation that didn’t contribute its fair share of defense funds to the alliance.
“You don’t pay your bills, you get no protection. It’s very simple,” Trump said at a South Carolina campaign event. “Hundreds of billions of dollars came into NATO, and that’s why they have money.” He also claimed that he told NATO members this when he was in office. This was the part that really caused Trump’s foes (and some of his supporters) apoplexy:
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, ‘Well, sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, “You didn’t pay. You’re delinquent?” He said, “Yes, let’s say that happened.” “No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
We can confidently assume, knowing Trump as we do (unfortunately), that this scene never happened except in the ex-President’s fertile imagination that rewrites history and his statements to others with great facility. How do we know this? We know it because Trump’s staff was (is, and will be) full of antagonistic and untrustworthy spies, double agents, disloyal employees with a grudge and snitches just dying to be the leak to the New York Times or some other eager publication of the latest verbal outrage by this strangely self-destructive leader with no impulse controls whatsoever. He was showboating, as he apparently must do, but he was also making a valid and important point for anyone able to clear away their dislike of the man and hear what he was really saying.
Unfortunately, as Reason’s J.D. Tuccille wrote, “Trump managed, typically, to frame the matter in the nastiest way possible.” Also typically, he recklessly gave the Trump Deranged another metaphorical stick to beat him with.
“The former president has set a dangerous, and shockingly, frankly un-American signal to the world!” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “When America gives its word, it means something. When we make a commitment, we keep it. And NATO’s a sacred commitment. Donald Trump looks at this as if it’s a burden,” Biden said. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell raged, “NATO cannot be an a la carte military alliance, it cannot be a military alliance that works depending on the humor of the president of the U.S!”
If it’s unAmerican not to be suckers and patsies, I guess Trump was that. Is the U.S. obligated to keep commitments when the nations benefiting from those commitments refuse to meet theirs? Contract law doesn’t require that. Neither does ethics. The U.S. didn’t make a unilateral promise to protect the nations in NATO, it was part of a mutual promise, one that too many NATO members aren’t keeping.
The U.S. has put itself in a dangerous financial situation. The national debt is officially $34.2 trillion. JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon predicts that the U.S. is maybe 10 years from a “rebellion” in global markets because of its reckless borrowing habits. The Penn Wharton Budget Model gives the U.S, longer, maybe 20 years, before the U.S. defaults with dire results “across the U.S. and world economies.” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warns that the national debt is “unsustainable.” These projections are a lot more reliable than the climate change doomsday scenarios that occupy so much of what’s left of Joe’s brain. Never mind—Democrats apparently believe that the U.S. should embrace the role of P.T. Barnum’s sucker born every minute.
NATO’s main raison d’etre is to protect Europe from Russia—this began as a Cold War alliance, after all. 70 % of the work of NATO is still paid for by the United States, across the Atlantic Ocean, as the nation in the least peril from Russia. How is that fair or just, especially when the U.S. doesn’t have the money to spend?
The most recent NATO Secretary General’s Annual Report states that in 2022, seven Allies met NATO’s spending guideline of 2% of their Gross Domestic Product on defense. “In 2014, only three Allies met the guideline. The United States accounted for 54% of the Allies’ combined GDP and 70% of combined defense expenditure.” That’s seven meeting their commitment out of 31 member countries, or a little more than 10% The seven members meeting their obligations according to the report are: the U.S. (3.46 % of the largest GDP in the world), Greece (3.54%), Lithuania (2.47%), Poland (2.42%), the U.K. (2.16%), Estonia (2.12%), and Latvia (2.07%). But Germany, supposedly Europe’s economic champ, came in at just 1.49 % of GDP. France spent 1.89 %.
“The British military—the leading U.S. military ally and Europe’s biggest defense spender—has only around 150 deployable tanks and perhaps a dozen serviceable long-range artillery pieces,” The Wall Street Journal reported last December. “France, the next biggest spender, has fewer than 90 heavy artillery pieces, equivalent to what Russia loses roughly every month on the Ukraine battlefield. Denmark has no heavy artillery, submarines or air-defense systems. Germany’s army has enough ammunition for two days of battle.”
Essentially, Europe is counting on the U.S. to defend it. Tuccille concludes, “The U.S. shouldn’t abruptly abandon allies, let alone suggest, as Trump did, that they have nice little countries and it’d be a shame if something happened to them. But it’s past time to put NATO members on notice that American taxpayers won’t continue picking up the tab for European defense needs.”
And that the next President might not be the accommodating, free-spending puppet that the current one is. That, I think, is what Trump’s message was.
Issued in the nastiest way possible.
Ethics Alarms 
That’s kind of interesting, given that the left is quite often opposed to military alliances like NATO and doesn’t like the fact that the United States keeps bases all over the damn place. These are the same people who say that the war in Ukraine is actually NATO’s fault and by extension America’s fault, since we should not have been trying to expand this alliance into Russia’s backyard.
Then again, there are also many on the right who say that NATO has outlived its purpose and why should we be picking up the tab for Europe’s defense? Essentially what we are doing is picking up the tab for their overly generous social programs with free medical care and fully funded retirement whether you worked or not.
Within my life, and within the lives of everyone reading this, Europe and the NATO Nations were able to come to America’s aid when asked. The deployment to Afghanistan from NATO and also some other allies like Australia was not insubstantial. Some of those allies somewhat more reluctantly deployed to aid us in Iraq, and the media gleefully announced each and every withdrawal, because it was a blow to George Bush who they hated. They especially loved it when Spain pulled the rug out from under us after a terrorist bombing swung an election far left. In my opinion, Spain should still be in the doghouse with the US and we should cut them off from any and all aid. I remember they had some kind of horrible earthquake a few years back and my first thought was that we should tell them “that’s funny, almost as funny as when you pulled the rug out from under us in Iraq. We’re not helping you at all, and you can go your own way, isn’t that what you wanted?”
Yes, Trump sometimes expresses things in the nastiest way possible, but sometimes that’s the only way you get the message across. If I ask you politely not to do something, you would probably brush it off as a request that means nothing. However, if I tell you “don’t fucking do that, you goddamned, motherfucking sonofabitch!” then I’ve probably got your attention.
Steve, you captured my entire sentiments. The interest on our debt now exceeds our entire military budget and much of that interest is a function of our spending proclivities overseas. The latest Senate Ukraine giveaway exceeds the entire annual allocation for the U.S Marine Corp.
A good swift kick in the butt is an attention getter.
As for the Trump deranged, even if he supported Biden policies they would frame his support as crazy policy knowing full well that Biden supporters would not see the association.
Them: “Imagine what we could do if we didn’t spend so much on the Military!”
Trump: “What if we didn’t spend so much on the Military?”
Them: “You’d be a treacherous Monster, that’s what!”
And that is the real issue, distilled to about 30 words. The left side of the political spectrum hates President Trump so badly that even things on which he and they ultimately agree…?…they still turn and pile on him.
A perfect example that illustrates thisisrichinct’s point? One of the first “imagination” tenets of Woke Kindergarten our good host posted last week revolved around “what if all militaries were banned and that money used elsewhere?” The Left by-and-large dislikes militaries, seeing them as instruments of large-scale oppression and colonialism that also swallow vast sums of money they’d rather have spent on themselves.
That is essentially what President Trump was proposing, albeit in rather gruff terms. ”You don’t want to pay your bill? Fine, we’ll save the money we would have used to defend you and spend it elsewhere.”
Had President Biden said the same thing – same exact words, same tone – the Left would have cheered his “hard line against the obvious financial delinquency displayed by some foreign governments who just want the U.S. to pay for everything.” When asked why Joe said “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.”…?…the response would likely be a defense of “he’s an old man who gets a little animated sometimes and uses hyperbole. Doesn’t your grandpa have a little rant once in a while?”
It’s Schrodinger’s Foreign Policy.
Without a doubt – the US *guaranteed* post-WW2 order has benefitted the entire world. Everywhere has a *massively* better standard of living than they did in the pre-War days of little hegemonic fiefdoms refusing free passage of the seas.
This post-WW2 order has benefited America especially well.
It’s actually *worth* it for us and for the world when we bear the burden of global security.
But we can’t say that. The moment we say that, freeloading countries worldwide would flat out dump half their defense spending and rely entirely on our defense.
But we also can’t completely demand other countries foot their own bill…because deep down we know we’ll come to their rescue anyway because it’s good for the global order that secures the greatest international commerce the world has ever seen.
But periodically it doesn’t hurt for people like Trump to remind the world that while we *could* bear the full burden alone…we don’t have to nor should we and other people’s are morally obligated to assist in their own defense.
Quoting the Times of London, Breitbart summarizes:
European Leaders Take Trump NATO Comments ‘Seriously But Not Literally’: Times of London
“Many European leaders concede that he basically has a point”, The Times of London said in a rare concession to Donald Trump over his NATO comments that prompted pearl-clutching outrage by some.
European leaders reacted to Donald Trump’s comments on NATO over the weekend — in which he laid out his frustration at member states refusing to pay their way and yet still expecting full protection from America’s military might and hence the U.S. taxpayer — in two ways, a report in The Times reflected.
Not a newspaper particularly friendly to the 45th President, the British broadsheet noted that some reacted with “sheer horror”, like Spain’s Josep Borrell, who unironically accused Trump of unacceptably proposing an “A La Carte” alliance when his home nation has taken that exact approach to it for years.
Yet others, The Times said in an uncharacteristic concession to Trump’s particular approach to cajoling recalcitrant allies into meeting their NATO treaty obligations, realised this was actually an “appallingly cavalier but necessary wake-up call”. In the words, the response was to take Trump’s comments as a statement to be understood “seriously but not literally”…
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/02/12/european-leaders-take-trump-nato-comments-seriously-but-not-literally-times-of-london/
One of the problems the American mainstream media has had with Trump is that they take him literally but not seriously. His supporters tend to look past the literal words and grasp his goals and aspirations. And they’ve liked what they heard.
How much that will be true in a notional second term is an excellent question that people just can’t stand to discuss. One of the problems is that the folks who are most hysterical about Trump are many of the same one who have made his reelection more likely.
And they just can’t stop spending money, either. The current foreign aid bill gives even more money to Ukraine and Israel than the failed useless border bill would have a week or two ago.
It’s not just NATO that takes U.S. dollars but they can at least pay their fair share and be willing to make an effort to defend themselves.
Yep, my congressman and both Senators are destined to receive (yet another) email from me regarding that bill.
Honestly I don’t have a major problem with the new Ukraine/Israel/Taiwan aid bill — I think it is certainly in our national interest to aid these struggles.
What does grate on me is that Republicans had the concessions on the border they thought inconceivable only a few months ago and they tossed them aside. There is not a snowball’s chance in Hades that they are going to get anything at all next year if Trump is reelected. What I think should have been the consideration was not what Biden might do with this new law — it doesn’t matter so much if he is voted out in November — but what Trump might do with it in a second term. Now he will never have that opportunity, and the border will continue to be chaos for the foreseeable future I think.
I do remember Trump telling NATO that. It is even more than he stated. The European countries really did come back with something along those lines. He finally got them to agree on those lines, then he asked for ‘back rent’ and they lost it.