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Posted on 10/09/2025 9:00:07 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that Spain be expelled from NATO over its failure to match the higher defense spending requirement he has engineered.
"We had one laggard, it was Spain," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "They have no excuse not to do this, but that's all right. Maybe you should throw them out of NATO frankly."
In June, the 32-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreed to massively boost defense spending over the next decade under pressure from Trump, who at the time threatened to punish Madrid on trade for resisting the new target of five percent of GDP.
Spain's socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has insisted Madrid would not need to hit the headline figure. Spain has been one of the lowest-spending NATO countries on defense in relative terms.
The US president -- who has repeatedly suggested Washington could withhold protection from European countries unwilling to spend more on defense -- rammed through the commitment to spend five percent of their GDPs on security-related spending in a move seen as key to keeping him engaged with NATO.
That headline figure breaks down as 3.5 percent on core defense spending and 1.5 percent on a looser range of areas such as infrastructure and cyber security.
(Excerpt) Read more at barrons.com ...
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Spain will soon be a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) anyway.
INactions have consequences.
Turkey first.
We don’t deserve him.
Spanish Lady comes to me, she lays on me this rose....
I enjoy Pres. Trump’s plain speaking.
So far, its gotten our trade partners to invest in America, it’s stopped a couple of wars, it’s gotten the inflation rate down and even prices on a few things down, and several other big things.
Spain would do well to heed his advice. Who knows. Maybe they’ll spend more on defense, less on illegals, and work out that Catalonian/Basque/Galician/Spanish Sahara problem they’ve got.
From the American point of view, we are exploited by Spain because everybody knows that if an article 5 war occurs, requiring the defense by all nations if one is attacked, that really means that America rides to the rescue or there is no rescue. So we have to pay and bleed while Spain benefits. Small wonder Donald Trump threatens to checkmate Spain's selfish gambit.
But what about all this from NATO members' point of view? Donald Trump has said more than Spain must pay, he has said, in effect, that he reserves the right to play or not play under article 5 if a NATO nation is attacked. Trump is not just saying you got to pay or I won't play, he leaves the implication that he might not go to war under article 5 even if and attacked nation is fully paid up.
At least that implication is worrying NATO member nations. It is this ambiguity that is destructive of NATO and should be corrected by Trump. It is one thing to demand that NATO members live up to their commitments before America is willing to bleed but quite another to leave NATO members unsure whether they have a deal at all even if they do pay up.
The recent incursions of European airspace by Putin was was almost certainly partially motivated to exert pressure on the NATO alliance in the hope that it will break up, or at least will open fractures within the organization and weaken it.
We should not play Putin's a game even as we rightly seek to reinvigorate NATO because the stakes are not just in Europe but in Asia where the Chinese are eyeing our fidelity to our treaty commitments to judge whether we might honor them under similar circumstances around Taiwan. Equally, our allies in the Pacific like Japan and North Korea are sensitive to Donald Trump's ambiguity concerning NATO.
The stakes are war in Asia or deterrence of war. The stakes include nuclear proliferation of disillusioned NATO members in Europe and among frightened Pacific Rim nations who might fear similar treatment from Trump.
“he leaves the implication that he might not go to war under article 5 even if and attacked nation is fully paid up.”
Article 5 doesn’t bind any nation to take military action if a member is attacked. Weasel words you can drive a tank thru.
Now Donald Trump has emphasized that ambiguity and in the process has vitiated the power NATO had to deter. The great benefit of NATO in Europe, or as viewed from Asia, is the power to deter.
Now we are in the worst of both worlds; we have compromised our ability to deter without explicitly extracting ourselves from the commitment to go to war while member nations, for their part, cannot formulate their national security policies because they cannot depend on the United States.
Why don’t we quit NATO then they can all do as they wish.
Actually it would be smart if Spain just left... they know NATO will fund and defend you regardless of whether you are a member lolol
Think about it! All those countries Russia would need to fight through just to get to the Spanish boarder. To Spain this appears to be a good deal.
I suspect that there are more than a few other countries that would like to be kicked out of NATO. It would unburden a big piece of their military expenditure and allow them to claim neutrality if the SHtF over there.
Why wouldn’t a country simply withdraw from NATO if they wanted to?
That's the only threat that seems to work...too bad Trump doesn't follow through on it.
Not a good idea to expel them but it is a good idea to threaten.
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