Posted on 04/13/2026 12:53:32 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
Victor Davis Hanson suggested letting NATO "die on the vine" by putting into it exactly the amount of effort that Canada does, while making bilateral deals with European countries that support the U.S., in this video for "The Daily Signal."
"Even though they have a $22 trillion GDP, apparently they don’t want to invest that in their own defense," he said. "And they don’t want us to use it when we need it."
"What’s the future? Do we get out of NATO? I don’t think we do. I think we just let it die on the vine," he suggested. "We are one of 32 nations, so we’ll pay one-thirty-second of the budget. We’re tired."
"Don’t cause any more trouble with them. Just say we’re going to treat you like you treat us."
"We’ll be kind of like Canada. Canada pays about 1.5%," said. "You love Canada. You don’t like us. We’re going to be your Canada. We will expend as much effort, as much arms, and as much intervention as Canada does. And that will be the new NATO."
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Once again, NATO is in crisis. It seems like this is happening every three or four years. It predates—and will post-date—Trump.
We are engaged in a bombing campaign to disarm the Iranian theocracy that, for 47 years, has killed Americans in embassies and military installations. It supplies the terrorists of Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. It funds and subsidizes terrorists in Europe. It tried to kill President Trump—I could go on forever.
So we decided enough is enough because we felt that their ballistic missiles had a range that could harm Europe, and soon us. That...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
Many of the NATO nations failed to keep the 2014 agreement they had with each other to fund 2% of their annual GDP for their own defense. Last year they raised it to 5%. I can’t see many of them getting up to par with that any time soon. Spain barely made it to 2%, then along came the 5% agreement, and they whined, so were given a special dispensation of only 3.5%. And just recently, their Prime Minister Sanchez, refused to allow the U.S. to use their bases or air space, as did Italy. Time to cast NATO to the curb. They’re nothing but a bunch of leeches. All they’ve ever done is grift off United States taxpayers.
The hilarious part is that if we dial back NATO participation, they’re going to have to pour money into their own defense (something that Germany is doing now) and they’re going to discover that they can’t afford their lavish welfare states and benefits for illegal immigrants and fund their own defensive forces. Now that Russia no longer appears to be pacified, they can’t take the chance that they’ll be undefended, so they’ll have to cut their welfare culture - which will cause unrest but will help fix their societies.
The above is the essence of communism, Socialism, Leftism, democRATS, DemoKKKrats.
Gain power, grift, and "F" the world.
Their pronouns are Me, Myself, and I.
This should be an interesting thread 🧵🧵🧵
Or its payback time for Trump being tough on Euros for weapons for for Ukraine. Trump blasted n humiliated these running dogs many times. BUT they sure are slurping down Putin's oil these days.
Our military is also to blame for scrapping 4x wooden hull minesweepers that had served 40 years. Wood hulls do not set off mines.....
VDH is way off on the Canadian GDP.
$22T is about 10 times what the Canadian GDP actually is.
The reasoning is OK but botching the data shouldn’t happen.
The issue is no longer the Euro’s failing to increase defense spending. They are, most quite significantly, the countries close to Russia not surprisingly the most.
The REAL problem is that in key areas, actual results for the major Euro “powers” are still sliding backwards. The UK for example, never fell below the original 2% target, has increased defense outlays, and the physical failures of the last several weeks are appalling. That’s before you even get to the policies of the Starmer gov’t.
“All they’ve ever done is grift off United States taxpayers.”
Europe is committing suicide. Stand back and let them.
You are missing the target. See my post just above.
Real conservatives realize that throwing money at a problem won’t solve it, if the approach is fundamentally wrong. And boy, howdy, the approach to defense in some of the Euro countries has seriously gone off the rails since, I would say, Desert Storm.
The Italy thing, BTW, was a paperwork snag. Who’d have guessed an Italian bureaucrat would be sticky about paperwork the US failed to submit? Other US ops at the base in Silicy continued and still do. Meloni has further cleared up the snag, and Italy’s position, also.
I think he was referring to the non-U.S, members of NATO. He was unclear.
I believe you've won the Understatement of the Day award - before 4:19 a.m.!
;-)
I’d say just get rid of the entire thing but if we have to stay in we might as well just cut back on the spending. It’s not like the Soviet Union is going to invade Europe at this point. The Russian’s can’t even take the Ukraine after 5 years
On a related note, Alex Soros and Elon Musk weigh in on Hungary’s recent election...
Insider Paper
@TheInsiderPaper
JUST IN - Elon Musk says Soros Organization has taken over Hungary after election results
7:25 PM · Apr 12, 2026 · 86.5K Views
https://x.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/2043470564212535331
Screenshots of the tweets at the link.
He’s talking about the combined GDP of the European Union member states.
If I were king, I would have Ursula von der Leyen arrested, tried and then executed the same way that Norway did to their president Vidkun Quisling in 1945.
Regards,
He explicitly referenced "Europe" - prolly meant European NATO members. (Esp. since the pop. figures he cites ["100 million more than the U.S.!"] line up with that assumption.)
Regards,
Actually, thanks to Trump, NATO is getting stronger.
Trump twisted their arms, and, reluctantly, they are contributing a lot more than they did before!
They need to do even more, but the trajectory is there!
NATO even enlarged itself by Sweden and Finland recently.
The current problem is, that many members do not want to get involved in Iran war, which seems to be widely unpopular in Europe.
And, NATO is defense alliance, it does not comply members to support military actions outside the NATO borders.
But, that will be worked out, eventually.
NATO is valuable alliance and will be there for a long time, thank goodness!
“The hilarious part is that if we dial back NATO participation, they’re going to have to pour money into their own defense”
Something I’ve also been saying for the past year. If we cut the cord with Europe, they will finally have to GROW UP, be BIG BOYS, and deal with their defenses, their neighborhood, and their nearly destroyed countries. Will they do that? Good question, it depends on just how committed their leaders are to permanently ending their societies and just how much survival instinct they have.
But, for now, they can simply keep kicking the can down the road, knowing Big Daddy, across the Atlantic, will always be there to bail them out should their cute little shit go bad (which it will, it has to). But who says we will bail them out or whether we’ll even be capable of pulling bailing them out, when that day comes?
That took me a minute. Clapboard is a type of house siding to me.
Other terms include clapperboard, film clapper, film slate.
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