The U.S. will pay for the chain reaction Trump set off in NATO

The Washington Post ^ | July 10, 2026 at 6:15 a.m. EDT | Fareed Zakaria

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Even people who dislike Donald Trump tend to give him credit for one thing: getting NATO to pay its fair share. American presidents have long grumbled about burden sharing. Trump has been crude, theatrical and transactional, but the sentiment he expressed was broadly shared. And Europeans got the message. Non-American NATO countries collectively spent 1.4 percent of their combined gross domestic product on defense in 2014; in 2025, it was close to 2.3 percent.

But be careful what you wish for.

The usual assumption is that if Europe spends more, the United States will spend less. This is demonstrably wrong. European defense spending is at its highest level in decades, yet Trump has proposed a staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027.

U.S. defense spending has never been determined only by the needs of NATO. It reflects America’s role as a global superpower, with bases, fleets and commitments across the world. Washington wants to deter Russia, counter China, project power in the Middle East, protect global sea-lanes, defend the homeland, maintain nuclear superiority, dominate space, lead in drones and artificial intelligence, and preserve the ability to fight far from home. In fact, the International Institute for Strategic Studies calculated in 2018 that direct spending on defense in Europe made up only about 5 percent of America’s total defense spending.

As Europe’s spending increases, the continent will become less dependent on the U.S., and less deferential to it.

For more than 75 years, America’s dominance within NATO has given Washington enormous advantages. The U.S. has more than 30 military bases across Europe, and these have allowed it to project power not just in Europe but in Africa, the Middle East...

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TOPICS: Military/Veterans; Weird Stuff
KEYWORDS: demagogicparty; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; espamibusmultis; eussr; fakenews; fareedzakaria; fishface; fourthreich; mediawingofthednc; officialdemnarrative; panicporn; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; washingtoncompost

[skr]

We’ll spend less on other people’s defense systems and more on our own. What’s the problem?

[HKMk23]

Linked from the Front page:

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts

[Vigilanteman]

Maybe a chain reaction like spending more for their OWN national defense?

Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

[captmar-vell]

CNN stooge Fareed Zakaria wrote ‘The post American world’ which was the unholy bible that demonic Obama creature used to carry around while being careful to be photographed virtue signaling his contempt for Americas future.

[citizen]

We can always count on the NYTimes pushing their propaganda on FR.

[citizen]

Correction, the WPost. Same difference.

[cpdiii]

Walter Duranty (25 May 1884 – 3 October 1957) was an Anglo-American journalist who served as Moscow bureau chief of The New York Times for fourteen years (1922–1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1917–1923). In 1932, Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, eleven of which were published in June 1931. He was later criticized for his subsequent denial of the widespread famine (1930–1933) in the USSR, most particularly the Holodomor.[1] Beginning in 1990, there were calls for the Pulitzer Board to revoke Duranty's prize. The board declined to revoke the award and in 2003 said the articles which it examined in making the award did not contain "clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception Per Wiki

Durante reporting was 95 years ago. Nothing has changed in those years. The Washington Post is still a purveyor of lies that always benefit Socialists, Marxists and Communists.

Actually Durante worked for the NY Times. I was simply using him as a most egregious violator of journalistic ethics. Today there is little difference between the Washington Post and the NY Times.

For Durante to not have seen the horror of those times in Russia is a plain damn lie. The purpose of the horror was to instill fear in the public. Thus if they hid the horrors it would have really been wasted effort. Durante knew!

[Paul R.]

All this hubbub in the article and comments here ignores a basic problem:

The Euros have considerably increased defense spending these last few years, effectively in some cases, like Poland, but, it seems to not improve the capabilities of the major Euro “powers”. Looking at the UK, for example, they’ve demonstrably become weaker.

I am usually one of the first to advise “follow the money”, but, in some cases, problems go deeper even than that.

[Paul R.]

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4387501/posts?page=48#48

[BlackbirdSST]

“yet Trump has proposed a staggering $1.5 trillion defense budget for fiscal 2027.”

Replacing weapons systems ain't cheap. The increase in budget should fall on the shoulders of every Ukraine flag waving idiot in this Country. The sane amongst US offered plenty of warning about where we would end up but the neocons, the globohomo's, the democommunist and the whole of the eurotrash grifters all had a plan.

So they thought. Now it's time to pay the piper!

[BlackbirdSST]

I forgot to add, FNATO!

[Angelino97]

Many conservatives, including Pat Buchanan and Joe Sobran, looked forward to a peace dividend. It was one reason they opposed the Gulf War and further involvement in the Mideast, and were called antiSemites.

[Angelino97]

European governments should act like grown-ups and fund their own defenses

So should Israel.

[hal ogen]

Stop posting pictures of nancy pelouse...she is so then.