Posted on 02/13/2025 5:07:06 PM PST by marshmallow
"It's an imperative given the strategic realities that we face, and that begins with increasing defense spending," Pete Hegseth added
WASHINGTON, February 13. /TASS/. European leaders must take primary responsibility for ensuring the continent’s security, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said at a press conference in Brussels following a meeting of NATO defense ministers.
"Leaders of our European allies should take primary responsibility for defense of the continent," he said.
"It's an imperative given the strategic realities that we face, and that begins with increasing defense spending," the Pentagon chief added. "2% is a start, as President Trump has said, but it's not enough. Nor is 3%, nor is 4%, more like 5%. Real investment, real urgency," he noted.
Over recent days, US President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that he would push NATO allies to increase their spending on defense to 5% of GDP.
The alliance countries set the task to bring their military spending to 2% of GDP at the summit in Wales in September 2014, motivating it by the "Russian threat" in connection with the reunification of Crimea with Russia. In July 2023, the Vilnius summit decided that 2% of GDP should become the minimum level of defense spending for NATO countries, rather than a target.
That’s crazy talk!
More importantly, Hegseth told the Europeans that he will NOT invoke NATO Article 5, should the Europeans ‘get cute’ with the Russians again, and then this time get pounded.
So it’s best that Europe learns to behave, now that the ADULTS have arrived in DC.
They’ve lived under the protection of our nuclear umbrella since 1945. That day is now over.
Is it?
The EUSSR was based on hatred of the USA. Empowering an enemy leads to being stabbed in the back.
The EUSSR and Russia are allies; they’ve been allies since before Nord Stream 1. The whole Ukraine debacle is a feint (deadly to ordinary Ukrainians) to impoverish the US and split Ukraine and the rest of eastern Europe between them. Sound familiar?
“The whole Ukraine debacle is a feint (deadly to ordinary Ukrainians) to impoverish the US and split Ukraine and the rest of eastern Europe between them. Sound familiar?”
Seems the US is CASHING IN quite well on this ‘feint’, while Europe’s economy is being DESTROYED, due to loss of Russian resources.
Who’s the enemy?
Ok so we don’t play their game. So what? You won’t get your monthly stipend from EU/Zelensky?
Giving them that level of autonomy is playing their game, since that’s what they wanted for decades. And since Zelensky is pro-EUSSR, that’s what he wants too. Why hand it to them?
Only takes a little bit of looking below the surface to see that.
The EUSSR is. They’ve said so on multiple occasions.
The left in the US certainly has been. DOGE is putting a stop to a lot of it, but nobody can be allowed to step in to fill the vacuum of advancing global totalitarian socialism because that’s exactly what the EUSSR wants to take the lead in.
“...but nobody can be allowed to step in to fill the vacuum of advancing global totalitarian socialism because that’s exactly what the EUSSR wants to take the lead in.”
If you mean EU, they’re now NPCs.
That’s why it’s a bad idea to make them players. There are plenty of Eurocrats who are chomping at the bit to become the EUSSR’s big-man dictator (recall their talk of a so-called “super-president” back in 2012).
After 2014, apparently Ukraine stopped being friendly towards Moscow.
Lukashenko is a stooge. But at least he gets to run Belarus (for now). However, he knows when Putin asks him for a favor. He'll do it.
European economies are being destroyed by opting to impose on themselves the highest energy prices and least reliable sources possible on their over-burdened industrial sector.
I think you should stop taking drugs and get help.
Why respond as if you were a liberal? Prefer MEGA to MAGA? The spending increase Hegseth called for is owed to us, not the EUSSR. The leadership there is anti-American.
Opus?
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