- *The American Dossier Editors Note- We welcome and would love for you to talk amongst yourselves on this issue as these 3 articles below offer interesting perspectives.
A Different Pont of View:
NATO Is Obsolete
-Source--The National Interest-
Before the United States President Donald Trump attempts real diplomacy with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Helsinki on July 16, he'll first be subjected to another summit. That first summit is a gathering of leaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). These leaders continually assure the United States they are America's best allies, even as most contribute little to America's defense and rack up huge trade surpluses with the United States. Trump will insist on a better deal but should go farther and wind down U.S. membership in NATO.
After the alliance was established in 1949, its first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, summed up its purpose concisely: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The unofficial mission matched the time well: Western Europe’s postwar future was clouded by the prospect of a Soviet invasion, American insularity, or German militarism—all possible given the preceding decades of history.
Nearly seventy years later, none of these concerns still exist. Furthermore, NATO's opposing alliance during the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, quit the Soviet Bloc in 1989, and the Soviet Union itself passed into history in 1991—twenty-seven years ago.
Despite endless searches for a new mission to justify its massive burden on U.S. taxpayers, NATO has failed to be of much use since then. As its boosters like to remind us, after 9/11, the alliance invoked its Article 5 mutual-defense provision on our behalf. But action from America’s allies did not follow the grandiose gesture—the NATO mission in Afghanistan relied mostly on U.S. forces and effectively failed. Read more
A Different Point of View:
NATO Will Outlive Trump (and Putin)
Source-CNBC-
Before Trump heads back to Europe, remember that NATO isn’t the G-7 and military relations are much stronger than the political ones they often endure.
Squee! What is Trump going to say this time?
That’s how some of the political press in DC sound already, both giddy and worried about what President Donald Trump is going to say at the NATO Summit in two weeks. More seriously, many Americans and Europeans are worried about what Trump is going to say and do in Brussels, and how much further Trump may sink U.S. relations in general with European and North American allies.
You can’t blame them. The G-7 meeting in Canada last month was a diplomatic disaster that left foreign policy pundit circles aghast yet again at how the American president treated the leaders of his nation’s closest allies. (Trump supporters loved every minute of it.) Even before that meeting, Foreign Policy had run an article headlined “Can the U.S.-Europe Alliance Survive Trump?” (They were talking about Trump pulling the U.S. out of the Iran deal.) After Vancouver, other headlines proclaimed U.S.-European relations at an all-time low. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said Europe could no longer “completely rely” on American protection, leading many to question the future of the alliance. Read more
A Different Point of View:
The US spent $686 billion on defense last year — here's how the other NATO countries stack up
Source-CNBC-
The world's most powerful military alliance will convene in Brussels next week – and President Donald Trump will be pushing the 28 other NATO members to spend more money.
"I'm going to tell NATO, ‘You gotta start paying your bills. The United States is not going to take care of everything,' ” Trump said Thursday during a rally in Great Falls, Montana.
In 2017, the U.S. accounted for 51.1 percent of NATO's combined GDP and 71.7 percent of its combined defense expenditure. In short, the U.S. contributed more funds to NATO than Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Canada combined.
Meanwhile, the U.S. spent $685.9 billion on defense.
Based on current prices and exchange rates.
"We're paying anywhere from 70 to 90 percent to protect Europe, and that's fine. Of course, they kill us on trade” Trump said. "We have $151 billion in trade deficits with the EU and on top of that, they kill us with NATO," Trump said referencing the budding trade war.
Trump, has frequently dressed down NATO counterparts and threatened to reduce U.S. military support if allies do not increase spending, singled out German Chancellor Angela Merkel during Thursday's rally. "I said, you know, Angela, I can't guarantee it, but we're protecting you, and it means a lot more to you than protecting us because I don't know how much protection we get by protecting you," Trump said.
"They [Germany] want to protect against Russia, and yet they pay billions of dollars to Russia, and we are the schmucks that are paying for the whole thing,” Trump told the crowd.Trump's comments come on the heels of reports that the Pentagon is assessing "the cost and impact of a large-scale withdRead morerawal or transfer of American troops stationed in Germany." Read more
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