Saturday, February 18, 2017

Whither NATO?

It seems a reasonable question to ask that if the Europeans don't want to defend themselves then why should we?
If you needed yet another reason to reject the EU as an utterly toxic organisation, here is an absolute corker:
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday that Europe must not cave in to U.S demands to raise military spending, arguing that development and humanitarian aid could also count as security.
No doubt Jean-Claude Juncker feels that NATO should deploy Oxfam, Save the Children & Charlotte Church to Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn in order to deter any Russian incursions into the Baltic states.
Admittedly, a couple percent of GDP turns out to be a lot of money.  It may be that Europeans might want to spend that on something else.  OK, fine.  Maybe us, too.

4 comments:

LindaG said...

Development and Humanitarian Aid might count as security; but how does that help all the people killed, or women raped, since letting muslims run roughshod over Europe?

An idea I heard somewhere of setting up a secure zone in Syria, or Saudi Arabia or somewhere, for the 'refugees' makes more sense to me than bringing tens of thousands of them to America, I know that.

Have a safe, blessed weekend.

Divemedic said...

For 2016, NATO’s total military budget is about $2 billion. (We’ll ignore the civilian costs, which are about $200 million.) Each member contributes an agreed upon percentage of the shared budget. The United States leads the pack, paying 22 percent of NATO's total budget. This year, that comes to about $460 million. (Germany comes in second, paying about 15 percent.)

That is only in direct expenditures. The cost of sending troops to counter Russia's Ukraine move is costing about $800 million.

Keeping in mind that the lion's share of the money that NATO's members spend on defense go to defending each member's own country, the US should not be spending more for Europe's defense than they are spending to defend themselves.


Will said...

It seems pretty obvious that funding their safety for the last 70 years was a mistake, since it let this sort of idiocy develop. WAY past time to turn off the money tap, and let them stand on their own feet.

It a shame that the European historic locations will be destroyed by their Islamic replacements/invaders/settlers. That's history in the unmaking.

Bryn said...

Juncker and his co-criminals in the EU have one objective - to keep the gravy train pouring huge sums into their personal salaries & pension funds. The problem is that far too many national politicians, including here in the UK, are following their lead instead of looking after their own countries interests.
A plague on all of them, and the sooner we are out of europe the better.