Well if yinz don’t like us you can always sign-on with Vlad Putin...
“Standing alone” would not be an issue if the Euroweenies spent a decent proportion of their revenues on their own defense.
Time to pull out.
LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said NATO was obsolete because it had not defended against terror attacks, but that the military alliance was still very important to him, The Times of London reported.
“I took such heat, when I said NATO was obsolete,” Trump told the newspaper in an interview. “It’s obsolete because it wasn’t taking care of terror. I took a lot of heat for two days. And then they started saying Trump is right.”
Trump added that many NATO members were not paying their fair share for U.S. protection.
“A lot of these countries aren’t paying what they’re supposed to be paying, which I think is very unfair to the United States,” Trump said. “With that being said, NATO is very important to me. There’s five countries that are paying what they’re supposed to. Five. It’s not much.”
NATO’s real mission ended 25 years ago.
NATO was used by Clinton to establish the Saudi-sponsored gangster state of Kosovo. From that day onward, we should have realized that it has been a bureaucracy captured by the socialists and globalists pushing the EU project and their globalist plans
NATO now is simply another United Nations, presiding over and providing security cover for the massive, leftist social-engineering of Western Europe.
I really want to UNexit to begin with.
After that, NATOexit if they don’t start paying their share.
What we really need is a Organization of English Speaking Countries.
Merkel has been talking tough against Trump. Why would these Europeans come to Merkel for protections? If they want the Donald back, Merkel has to go first.
Time to grow up
Given what the EU are spending on welcoming a million male non assimilating muslim invaders openly dedicated to destroying western culture, , I have to ask what is anyone defending anyway.
And when NATO becomes a cover for US and UK bombing Libya SYRIA Iraq and Afghanistan and droning Pakistan and Yemen, , you got to ask again what the “ NA” stands for in NATO?
In the aftermath of WWII, the nations of Europe were economically devastated. The Eastwrn European nations were occupied by the Red Army, so not much could be done for them. The Western European nations needed assistance lest they too fall to Communism. Hence the Marshall plan to economically rebuild them and NATO to protect them militarily.
Once they got back on their feet, though, by about the mid-late 1950’s or so, they returned to prosperity. This was not reflected, however, in the defense budgets of these nations. For the most part, they were quite happy to take the free ride offered by the US defense umbrella, and thereby use their wealth to promote a socialist domestic agenda.
Now that the Cold War is history, Trump is absolutely right, NATO is obsolete. It is high time these prosperous nations provide for their own defense. Should aggression from Russia or some other source threaten Europe, it may still be wise for the US to assist in defense of Europe, much as we did in the first half of the 20th century. Such decisions should be made based on the actual geopolitical situation, though, and any such alliance should not be an excuse for European nations to neglect their own defense.
NATO is - incomplete. The treaty is in place, but the contributions are a little lopsided at the moment. When NATO is called upon to present a “united” front, the biggest contributor in both money and materials, is the United States. There is a show and flurry of action by the military components of the other member states, but in the end, only very rarely are any of them ever sent outside their home countries.
The EU is trying to be much more than it really is. They are a customs union, supposedly freely trading among themselves, with a united front raised to outside governmental entities, but they try to take it further, making a federation out of nations which have maintained hostilities for centuries, even millennia, with tribal allegiances far greater than any sense of unity of purpose. Attempts to unify Europe under one rule, be it the Hapsburgs, or Napoleon, or Adolf Hitler, are almost always accompanied with bloodshed and warfare. Over time, this tends to harden attitudes, and the lack of conciliatory efforts leads to fractures and schisms through all the schemes.
High school on an international level. And with much more deadly weapons.
Maybe if some of them read what Trump actually said, and listen closely to what the man actually said, this fear mongering being put out would have no basis. Obama did do the wrong thing by throwing Israel off/under the bus and Ms. Power should have taken a powder before she let her boss make such a fool of America and himself.
The barking, nipping pack of poodles just got kicked by a man. LOL! It looks like European leaders’ stupid verbal attacks and condescension towards Trump wasn’t the best tactic after all.
Stupid Europeans writing checks their countries cannot cash.
Hey ‘Europe’...Focuses the mind, doesn’t it?
I’m starting to understand Trump. He’s doing this to get them talking. Then he sits down at the table with them and gets them to agree to significant changes, like paying their own way. He will not try to do away with NATO. Believe me.
Buy his book “Great Again.”
Europe’s greatest enemy is Islamic migration and subsequent rising terrorism. What is the EU doing? Demanding more of such. Until the EU and NATO pivot to face the real enemy, they are increasingly irrelevant.
Looks like Trump still wants NATO, but wants to reduce our NATO spending.
Sorry anti-NATO folks, Trump's position sounds about right.
If paying their fair share = standing alone, because they don’t want to do that, then so be it.
At what point did this become a "hard-line" position? When member states find, as Germany has, that they need to double their defense commitments in terms of GNP to come up to the minimum standard set by the existing treaty, there's a problem, and there's been a problem for a very long time.
First, a reconsideration of NATO's role, and a look at the map. Last I saw Turkey does not reside in the Northern Atlantic; nor, for that matter, does Greece. When NATO expanded into that arena it managed to take on a huge range of commitments with very little discernible increase in contribution. And if NATO's purpose is the integrity of western Europe and it doesn't recognize that there is an invasion going on at the moment, that calls into question whether the membership even recognizes what the issue is. Surely under these conditions a call for reconsideration is not exactly a radical position. This arena is begging for a fresh set of priorities.
What that may take to push into action is the question. The EU is a major player in every geopolitical sense, or so we are repeatedly told: economic, cultural, political, but its member governments, and, if we are to believe the international media, its member citizens, cannot appear to muster the determination for their own defense, much less the funding. Perhaps it's time for something new.